


frosted sea glass ;

by therentyoupay



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M, Mermaids, Secret Identity, Supernatural Elements, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therentyoupay/pseuds/therentyoupay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You,” Jack says warmly, breathlessly, and it’s then that Elsa notices that his feet are bare in the sand. “You are going to change your mind.”</p><p> <br/>— In which Elsa accidentally makes a friend. { Jack/Elsa, Mermaid AU }</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. change your mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _8/1/15_. I've been posting the first few installments of this fic to tumblr, but I've missed using AO3... time to move them over!

* * *

  **frosted sea glass ;**

* * *

There is a strange boy on the beach who won’t stop staring at her.

Elsa would argue that she only knows this because Anna keeps giggling and teasing her about it, but the truth is that she’s felt his gaze for some time now, probably since the changing of the tides. He’s been sitting atop one of the large boulders not too far off behind them, and has presumably made a show of watching the waves.

“Are you  _sure_  you’re not coming in, Elsa?” Anna pleads, pulling gently at Elsa’s fingertips, and effectively pulling Elsa away from her thoughts. She smiles at Anna, but remains resolutely seated beneath their small village of large umbrellas. Her heart squeezes at the few specks of white sunscreen still dotted over Anna’s freckled cheeks.

“I’m sure,” Elsa remains firm, even in full view of so many laughing and happy friends. Rapunzel and Eugene have already rushed into the water, and Hiccup and Astrid and the others are not far behind. Kristoff is waiting as patiently as he can, but the waves are calling to him. Today, Anna is going to learn to surf.

“Go on,” she calls, waving her off, and then she is left alone on the beach with her book, and everyone’s things to look after. She rather prefers it that way: a nice book, plenty of shade, two bottles of sunscreen, and now—peace and quiet. Elsa’s braid is sticking to the sweat at her back, and sand is sticking to her skin, and she half-wishes that she’d stayed behind at their room, but knows that she would never have been allowed. It’s just as she’s finally gotten into the thick of her newest story that an additional shadow casts down nearby.

Elsa begrudgingly raises her eyes from her book and recognizes her visitor at once.

In her stoniest voice, Elsa politely asks, “Can I help you?”

The boy looks to be about Anna’s age, though she can’t tell if his appearance rings true. He’s wearing faded cargo shorts and a black t-shirt that hangs just a tad too loose and pulls a bit too tight, respectively, and an unbuttoned flannel even though it’s clearly hot enough to cook something on the rocks. The boy’s hair is a shocking shade of white-blond, and his eyes are bright blue, and he’s surprisingly pale. His hands are shoved into his pockets and he’s grinning, just a tiny bit, and though it feels strange to be on the receiving end of such an open look, it doesn’t feel particularly malicious. But he’s also not saying anything, which isn’t helping his case.

Elsa doesn’t glare so much as she  _stares_ , impatient and pointed, with one finger delicately holding her place on the page.

The boy nods to the book on her lap and— _so help me, if he asks me what I’m reading like any of those creepers on the subway—_ clears his throat, harsh and loud, and says, “I haven’t seen you before.”

Elsa blinks, because for a moment she’s surprised by the deepness of his voice.

“I haven’t been here before,” she answers simply, and wonders if she’d sounded rude. Should she care? She’s not an impolite person, but she won’t stand for nonsense either. She wishes she’d been wearing her sunglasses before he approached.

She has the strangest feeling that he’s seeing a lot more in her eyes than she is in his.

The boy abruptly turns back to the ocean, and Elsa catches sight of a defined jaw and a strong neck, and then starts when he swivels back to face her, feels shocked by the genuine warmth in the expression on his face. And then she notices that he’s gesturing to her friends, still out in the water, completely oblivious to her conversation.

She feels a brief swell of panic, until the boy nods again, and says, “They're—they’re not bad. Swimmers.”

Elsa cocks a brow, both intrigued and unimpressed. As he continues to examine the crowds out in the surf with open delight, Elsa takes a moment to reassess: could he be a lifeguard or swim instructor, perhaps? (Hard to believe; not very tan.) A local trying to stake his oceanic territory? (Perhaps, but what qualifications does that give him for being a proper judge of aquatic abilities?) Someone earnestly trying to engage in small-talk?

Elsa takes one final glance at the line of his jaw, then decides that enough is enough.

“They love it,” Elsa concedes, then stiffens her shoulders with resolve. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be—”

“Why—you aren’t with them?”

The openness of the confusion on his face might be endearing, if it weren't so confusing itself. Elsa’s mouth opens, partially of its own accord, and before she knows what she’s doing, she says, “I’m sorry,” in a rather icy tone. “Who are you?”

He turns toward her more fully, which makes Elsa uneasy, even if he doesn’t move any closer; he’s still at least three or four paces away, and his smile is disarming, and his eyes are very kind, and  _am I overreacting_? Anna always tells her she worries too much, but—?

“Me?” he grins, bright and wide, like this is something amusing. It must be, though Elsa can’t see the humor. “I am—you can call me Jack,” he introduces himself. If possible, his grin has grown even wider.

“Jack,” she repeats evenly, with all the reserves of her patience. She prepares for the farewell. “Look, I really appreciate the—”

“You?” he insists, taking a half-step closer, and stops. His perceptive eyes have noticed the way Elsa has stiffened in her seat. The grin slips, just a little, and though Elsa would not hesitate to punch his lights out, she also suddenly feels irrationally worried about this socially inept boy wearing too-large cargo shorts and a too-small shirt. Elsa sighs, long and deep, and closes her book. For now.  _Well_ , Elsa considers: if someone were to try something questionable, they probably wouldn’t do it in broad daylight on a crowded beach with someone’s friends all nearby.

Probably.

“Elsa,” she replies, much more politely this time. She’s suddenly very aware of the string-bikini she’s wearing… and the fact that he hasn’t once looked anywhere but at her eyes. When he smiles, she’s already starting to feel a little foolish. (Not  _regretful_ , necessarily, but—yes. A little antsy, a little foolish.)

“You—are not in the water,” Jack notes stiltedly once more, and her gaze follows his outstretched hand when he gestures to the long expanse of beach, occupied mostly of empty umbrellas and lawn chairs. Almost everyone is out in the waves.

But not Elsa.

“I hate the ocean,” she answers honestly, for she couldn’t possibly have expected his reaction.

His eyes go wide— _wow, they are_ blue—and his mouth gapes open, and  _yes, he must be a local_ , Elsa decides, to hear such devastating news with such unadulterated shock. He breaks into laughter just as Elsa is about to write him off, and she’s once again taken aback by the brightness of it, the way he laughs with his whole chest, with all of his teeth. It’s not very loud, and it’s not necessarily  _mean_ , but it’s a very  _real_ , very surprised laugh, and Elsa keeps getting the impression that he’s sharing it with her.

(If she finds out Eugene spiked her drink that morning, she is going to kill him.)

“You,” Jack says warmly, breathlessly, and it’s then that Elsa notices that his feet are bare in the sand. “You are going to change your mind.”

Elsa is going to ask him about that, and what he could possibly  _mean_ by it—this strange young man who wanders aimlessly around the beach in happy-go-lucky delight and speaks with enough conviction to probably rake in Anna’s admiration, who looks  _into_ her eyes instead of below them—when Anna appears from the waves, Kristoff in tow, obviously distraught.

“What happened?” Elsa calls out, and drops her book to the seat of her chair as she rises. She offers Jack a barely-passing glance as she rushes toward Anna, who is holding one limp hand to her chest.

“Elsa, I’m sorry,” Anna says, distressed and disappointed, and Elsa is already preparing to call for a doctor when Anna says, “I forgot to take off the necklace before I went in, and—”

“You’re not hurt?” Elsa demands, and looks hers sister over, because she doesn’t believe it, not yet.

“ _No_ ,” Anna groans, and Elsa snaps her eyes to Anna’s, takes a hard look at the misery in them. “Elsa, I'm  _sorry_. I—it was your favorite. You  _gave_ it to me.”

“Anna, it’s just a necklace,” she reassures her, almost scolding. Elsa rubs her hands gently over Anna’s shoulders.

But she isn’t consoled.

“It was mom’s,” Anna says brokenly, and it’s clear that she may actually cry.

Elsa hugs her immediately, sticky salt and sweat and all, and hushes her before the tears even begin to form.  _It’s just a necklace_ , Elsa reminds herself, even as her stomach sinks with loss. But that feeling could come later—Anna would already load herself with enough guilt; she doesn’t need to carry Elsa’s disappointment, too.

“Oh,” sniffs Anna, when she sees Jack waiting patiently by the line of umbrellas, politely averting his eyes toward the rocks. She wipes the salt water from her face and slips on her usual, welcoming smile. Kristoff plants his surfboard in the sand, and comes over to investigate, just as Anna glances meaningfully to her sister and asks, “Who’s this?”

 _No one_ , Elsa wants to answer, and doesn’t understand the new, awkward flip of her stomach. “This is Jack,” is what she actually says, simply to be polite, and that’s it—that’s when Jack turns back to the pair of them and grins, and Elsa gets the feeling that something about their vacation is about to change.

And it’s not just because Anna gets a mischievous look in her eye, either.

“Hey,” says Jack, with an endearing little wave, and Elsa can already feel herself sinking.

She’s accidentally made a friend.

* * *

 

 


	2. the most interesting thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _8/1/15_. Continuing the transfer. Three more to go for tonight!

 

Jack claims he doesn’t have a cell phone, which is Elsa’s next clue that something is not right.

Anna thinks it’s charming, of course, when he politely offers this excuse as to why he can’t give them his phone number, and she proceeds to ask him a whole number of questions about his opinions on technology and social media. Jack tells her—though maybe not in so many words—that it sounds like a nice way to stay in touch, but that he doesn’t use a computer very often. That’s about as specific as it gets.

Elsa sits in her chair beneath her umbrella and trains her eyes on her book. They invite him into the water, but he’s happy just to amble around the beach, so he spends the next hour or so sitting with them under their umbrella village, talking to whichever of her friends just happen to be taking a moment to dry off. Admittedly, she does not do much of the talking. It doesn’t take him very long to meet a few of the others, and it takes even less time for them to fall just as much under his spell as Anna has.

Elsa quietly endures the whole process with growing distaste: Where did this man come from? Hadn’t he just been staring at them for the last half hour or so? How did they all become so friendly all of a sudden? The sudden shift is disorienting and, as it is, Elsa already doesn’t quite have her feet underneath her as much as she’d like.

And Elsa can only pretend to read for so long.

Rapunzel has already asked Jack about the best local pastry shops (he only cares for one) and Eugene has already dug up a recommendation for a bar (turns out there aren’t that many places to choose from) when Rapunzel twists herself on her beach towel to face Elsa and traps her with, “Hey. What are _you_  hoping to find here in Cape Cod?”

Elsa makes the mistake of looking at him. He’s in the beach chair next to hers because of  _course_ Rapunzel offered for him to sit down and, of course, out of the whole line of empty chairs, the one he’s picked is the one right next to hers. Looking now, she sees that he’s shifting forward in his seat, listening with interest. it looks as if he might be leaning in closer, too, just a little, and Elsa suddenly feels a completely unnecessary bout of pressure.

 _Peace and quiet_ , Elsa thinks automatically, but that’s not entirely true.  _Time with my sister_ , she adds, but also knows that her plans are changing; she sees the way Anna is starting to look at Kristoff.

(A little similar to the way he’s been looking at her all year.)

“An interesting story,” Elsa answers, unthinkingly, and then startles when Rapunzel’s gentle laughter rings out.

“Elsa,” she chided, with fondness. “Not even I can read for fifteen straight hours a day—and I was the English Major!”

“The beach is a perfectly acceptable place to read,” Elsa bites back, but it’s got pleasant humor in it… until she sees that Jack is grinning along with them. Her comfort diminishes.

“Well, unless we’re going to talk about  _my_ favorite book,” stands Eugene, who is clearly in good spirits, “I’m off for another round. You in, Elsa?”

Elsa smiles, wry and dry. “No, thank you.”

“Jack?” Rapunzel invites, and bless her, she actually looks hopeful.

But Jack isn’t paying attention—not even to her _,_ she realizes. He’s looking off toward the sandy path through which they’d come. Elsa can’t see anything of interest in the long, tall grasses or the old, rotting fence posts, but Jack is enthralled.

“Sorry,” he apologizes abruptly, once he’s realized that they’re still waiting for him to speak. “No, thanks. I… think my ride is coming soon.”

Rapunzel lets out a soft breath. “Did you need a ride earlier?” she questions, and Elsa is a little uncomfortable with all of this secondhand guilt she’s feeling. Honestly,  _they_ are not responsible for his logistical concerns. “We could give you a lift somewhere if it’ll be easier for you to get back to your… person. People? Your ride.”

Whatever awkward trance Jack was in is broken by a quick, roguish sort of look back at Rapunzel, and Elsa unwillingly chances a glance toward Eugene. He looks completely unconcerned by this strange youth who has happened upon them and apparently evokes random acts of charity in all of her friends, even more so than usual, and she wonders vaguely why he does not seem…  _concerned_. (Is he concerned? Is  _Kristoff_ concerned?)

Elsa is. 

“No thanks,” Jack smiles, and Elsa determinedly lowers her eyes to her book. The movement feels closer to an eye roll, and she takes a moment to wonder when she’d apparently become a bit of a snob. ( _Anna is right_ , she thinks, staring at the page. _You are still a bit stand-offish, aren’t you?_ ) “I think they’ll be waiting in the land on the other side,” Jack says, and Elsa looks up.

“The lot?” Eugene asks, distractedly adjusting his shades.

“Yes,” Jack repeats, as Elsa frowns. “The lot.”

“Do you live around here?” Rapunzel asks quickly, still on her bright yellow beach towel. Eugene looks impatiently to the water, but sticks around. “I know we wouldn’t be able to text you, but it’d be nice to run into you again!”

It’s a little alarming, actually, to see the kind of impact that Rapunzel’s words have on him. Elsa genuinely wonders if he has many friends, and where they might be. How often does this stranger hear those words?

It strikes a little pang in her heart, in the same moment that it raises a red flag.

But the warmth in his expression feels real, and so does the excitement, and he laughs a little when he says, “I don’t live  _too_ far. I’m sure I’ll… be around. Thank you for the chair.”

He stands, and Elsa stays seated, and the others share their goodbyes. Elsa waits as long as she thinks she can then looks up from her book to give a close-mouthed smile and a little wave, just before he leaves. This time, her sunglasses are on.

She still has the feeling he sees right through her.

“Am I the only who thinks that was strange?” she asks, as soon as they can no longer see him over the sandy hill. A very clear picture of blue flannel and brown cargo shorts against the grassy horizon is still floating a little too comfortably at the front of her mind.

“Elsa,” Rapunzel scolds, and she actually sounds a bit annoyed. “Don’t be such a judger.”

Her uncle actually  _is_  a judge, but Elsa doesn’t think that argument will help. “Don’t you think it’s a little bit odd that some random person was just hanging out at the beach by himself all day and then suddenly decided to insert himself into a group of people he’s never met?”

Rapunzel leans back, as if Elsa has physically thwacked these words against her chest.

“I’m sorta glad you weren’t born in the seventies,” mutters Eugene, but Elsa pretends not to hear him; Rapunzel just looks disappointed.

“It’s not like any of  _us_  are social experts,” Rapunzel points out, which, okay. Fair. Eugene makes an acquiescing face and nods, but Elsa only stares, begrudgingly; Rapunzel’s tone changes ever so slightly. “Okay. Well, maybe some people are just tired of being by themselves,” she remarks, offhandedly, with such a withering look of  _meaningful subtext_  that Elsa’s defenses rise immediately to the forefront. Elsa is about to list off at least fourteen reasons for why she has every right to be skeptical, maybe a little suspicious,  _realistic_ , when next Rapunzel says, "All I'm saying is that maybe we shouldn’t just assume that everyone’s got some big secret to hide.”

It’s a little bit of a low-blow, and it’s a little bit sharp and, regrettably, it may actually be a fair point.

Elsa is still biting her cheek and mulling it over when Rapunzel sighs and stands, says, “See you later, okay?” with a sweet little smile, all forgiveness and truces and warmth—the sly, cunning, thoughtful little feline—and goddammit but Elsa probably owes Rapunzel a tiny bit of an apology, at least for her brashness.

If nothing else.

//

She does apologize, hours later, when she’s thought it through and has drank at least two and a half margaritas. Elsa tells herself that the half is so Anna wouldn’t drink too much, but if she dared say so aloud, Eugene at least would probably know better.

Hiccup and Astrid are lingering at the bar, Anna and Ruffnut are dancing with Rapunzel on the floor, and that leaves Elsa and Eugene overseeing their drinks and holding the booth. The rest of the others are off somewhere, probably outside for a breath of fresh air. Eugene ‘watches’ everyone’s drinks by sampling each of them, and Elsa, for all of her values of cleanliness and vigilance from germs, actually lets him. For the most part though, Elsa is once again responsibly watching everyone’s stuff, and sipping at each drink much more slowly than necessary.

Someone has to be the responsible one.

“This band isn’t half-bad,” he shouts to her, and Elsa tilts her head his way. “But I bet it’d only be a quarter-bad if I had another drink.”

Elsa glances down at the collection he has tasted in front of him. “Whose?”

A bark of laughter escapes, short and self-deprecating. “Mine,” he quips, with a slight scrunch of his face, and Elsa belatedly wonders if there’s a reason he hasn’t gone back to the bar, himself. She’d assumed of course, that he was just drinking everyone else’s to be funny, or to try new things, or as a principle of laziness, but—

“Are you going to go get one?” she asks, when he doesn’t move.

There’s a bit of a grimace on his face. He lets out an actual  _grunt_. “Okay. All right, look—here’s the deal: you can't share this with Rapunzel,” Eugene haltingly begins, with as straight a stare as Elsa has ever seen on his face. He nods to the bar. “You see that bartender with the big, dark hair?”

Elsa's eyes narrow, and then subtly glances toward the bar. Elsa catches sight of her immediately: an older woman, beautiful, with a wild mane of dark hair. “Yes,” Elsa replies through tight lips, then sips at the remainder of her second margarita.  _Needs more salt._

“Okay, well. She is…  _quite_  insistent about her, uh, let us say—customer service.” Elsa detects the slightest twinge of embarrassment, and her gaze unwillingly trails its way to the dance floor, toward a very particular person. His body language is rather stiff and the dots quickly begin to connect. “Rapunzel was clearly with me, but I think, you know—the  _age_  difference was like… well. Anyway. You know."

Elsa watches the complexity of tension in Eugene's shoulders; she knows.

"I played it off, real casual, and made it clear that I was just there for my drinks, you know? And I was. I mean, I  _am—_ just up there for the drinks. You know that. More importantly, _Rapunzel_ knows that. But the message isn’t... quite received. Rapunzel hasn’t actually  _said_  that the flirting bothers her, but...”

“What do you want?” Elsa asks, cutting straight to the business details, because truly,  _say no more_. She’s already standing.

“Elsa,” Eugene smirks, laughing with surprise. “Are you offering to be my knight in shining armor and buy me a drink?”

“Didn’t you just say something about flirting?”

Eugene winces, sudden and sharp. “Sorry,” he grimaces, and he sounds sincere. “Old habits.”

 _Die hard_ , Elsa thinks, but does not say. Old habits, indeed. “You’re getting a draft,” she decides, with a sweet sense of justice.

“Fair enough,” he concedes, apologetically, and then she’s on her way.

The bartender— _Gothel_ , according to the name tag—is a rather intense woman, but Elsa finds that it makes their business transaction all the simpler: Gothel is brusque, Elsa is crisp, the service is quick, the tip is appropriate, and Eugene all the while remains the Guard Dog with no threat to his comfort. There. Elsa has saved the day.

Or she would have, had she not spun away from the crowded bar and directly into the torso of someone standing a bit too closely behind her.

“Ah,” Elsa says with resignation, staring in unhindered acceptance at the lime wedge that has found its way to the floor. The stranger who bumped into her is still standing in front of her, apparently, and  _is it just me, or are those sandals just the tiniest bit too small—?_

“Sorry!” claims a too-close voice, and Elsa’s head snaps up.

The bar is dark, there are a few flashing lights, and really, Elsa’s heart should not be pounding this hard while standing so still.

“What are you doing here?” she demands. If her voice is a little too loud, it’s only because of the music.

Jack stares down at her for half a moment in shocked surprise. Yes, Elsa. _S_ _kip the salutations, proceed straight to demands,_ but he only laughs, bright and sharp, and Elsa is left feeling inexplicably indignant. He looks just as baffled by the possibility of them standing next to each other in a bar as Elsa does.

“This place,” Jack explains with conspiratorial good humor, “I hear it has—good dancing.”

“How did you know we were here?” Elsa demands, and then immediately balks at her own rudeness, at this inexplicable feeling of suspicion and irritation and uncertainty that is coursing through her. Honestly, she may be uptight but she is never  _this_ uptight.

Jack laughs, like he is confused. Like, somehow, Elsa is amusing to him.  _I am not here for your entertainment_ , she thinks icily, and thinks resentfully to the triple sec that is still dripping from her fingers.

“I come here,” he answers, and has to raise his voice to match the growing rumble of the bass. He stumbles over his words, but Elsa chalks it up to the annoyed patrons who are trying to elbow their way past them to the bar. Elsa steps away from the bar and deeper into the crowd as Jack follows, as he leans closer down so she can hear and reminds her, “I—recommended this place to your—friend.”

 _Ah_. She blanks, more than a trifle embarrassed.  _Good one, Els_.

She sighs, exasperated, and tosses her head a bit as she searches for her words. Her hands are growing cold from holding onto two drinks, and her arms aren’t exactly comfortable; better to get back to Eugene quickly, before somebody sees Jack and tries to wrangle him in.

“I’m sorry,” she reluctantly starts. “I didn’t mean to—overreact. I don’t think it’s entirely your fault, I just—I’m just feeling a bit out of place lately, and this vacation is supposed to be relaxing, and instead all I seem to be doing is worrying, so I don’t mean to take it out on you, and this is—this is far too much information,” Elsa trails off in mortification, immediately, at the utter confusion she sees on Jack’s face. From the looks of things, he isn’t following a single word of what she’s saying, no matter how desperately he seems to be trying. “I assumed you came here looking for us,” is how she concludes her inadequate explanation, and subtly inches her way to the left, out of the lingering immediate bar-crowd and into the band-crowd. Jack, to her dismay, follows suit.

“You believed—I was looking for you?” Jack asks, intrigued, and Elsa’s mood sours. Yes,  _ha ha._ Let’s all take delight in pointing out Elsa’s suspicious tendencies, here we go. Though to be fair, Jack may have a right to be offended, what with all her affronted, standoffish behaviors. Doesn’t mean she’ll be inviting him along to join their dancing party, either way, but.

He probably has the right to be offended, at least.

“Yes,” Elsa answers, pausing in the middle of a new throng of people. There are people singing all around her, but Elsa isn’t even sure she recognizes the song. She needs to stop talking and find her booth of sanctuary, and hand Eugene his drink. “A little self-centered, in hindsight,” she admits, guilt growing, and instead of sighing, she rewards her introspection with a generous sip of her drink. Honestly, she should have just stayed in the apartment.

“I was,” Jack answers quickly, loudly enough and close enough to Elsa’s face to make her jerk back slightly from her straw. His eyes are wide with fresh excitement, and his face is very pale and clean and clear, and Elsa  _this is not the time_. “I came because I thought you would come.”

Oh.

“Oh,” Elsa repeats, with increasing coldness. She eyes the ice in her drink with disdain. “Well. Here we are.”

“No,” Jack insists, with far more vehemence than Elsa thinks the conversation warrants, and she glares at him with the quirk of a supercilious brow. Jack’s mouth opens wordlessly, his frenetic mind clearly racing behind his bright blue eyes, and Elsa wonders if she’s being too harsh, too resistant, when his speechlessness subsides and she’s hit with, “I mean—yes, I am interested—in your friends… But I came here because—I thought I would find  _you_ here.”

Elsa stares.

“How old are you?” she demands.

Jack laughs, sharp and loud, and all of the tension seems to wash right out of him; it’s disorienting, and a little dizzying, because Elsa is not quite ready to let go of it yet. The tension.

“Elsa,” Jack grins, and her stomach does something rather inconvenient, something that shows yet again why Elsa should probably avoid tequila. “Who protects her friends, and loves her stories, and hates the sea.”

Technically, it was the  _ocean_  that she hated, but (1) again, Rapunzel was the English Major, not her, and (2) he probably didn’t care about such semantics, anyway.

“Right,” Elsa replies crisply, because it has just occurred to her that she is still nowhere near Eugene or their table. How long has she been standing here, chatting with Jack in the middle of a crowded bar, with two drinks in her hands? “So are you here to teach me the ways of the local Cape youth?” she asks, with just a hint of derision, because smalltalk has never been her thing, and she is honestly still trying to figure out what cards to play. Jack only frowns, obviously perplexed.

“What?”

“Sorry,” Elsa replies, quick and automatic. “Never mind. I’ve never been known for my sense of humor.”

Jack smiles: a one-sided, half-mouthed sort of gesture that forces Elsa to look away. The live band is closing down for the night, it seems, and preparing for a DJ to take its place. “Oh no,” Jack assures her, though she’s not really sure for what. “Everyone has one. You just—some people just need to be in the water to find it.” Elsa snaps back to stare at him, and in her confusion, she bends out of shape.

“You haven’t even been in the water since I’ve met you,” Elsa accuses sharply, then backtracks. “That I know of,” she adds, to be reasonable, and looks down at his clothes. It’s still the same outfit as earlier, she notices, and lets her gaze linger on the collar of his black t-shirt.

To her surprise, Jack does not reply.

In fact, he looks rather uncomfortable. His jaw slants to the side, like he is biting his cheek, and his eyes cast down to the ground.

“Oh my god,” breathes Elsa, with rising alarm. With a familiar, sinking, striking sensation in her stomach. “That was— _incredibly_  rude of me. I don’t know why I’m—” she rushes, and suddenly feels rather exhausted. “Jack, I am so sorry.”

"It's—I’m okay,” he reassures, but his shrug is half-hearted. “I—it’s hard, isn’t it? This—communicating. This language is—I am still earning my land-legs.”

“I—sorry?” Elsa stumbles.

“I made you uncomfortable,” Jack says with conviction, and  _oh god—he’s apologizing._  At least, she thinks he is, until: “Why?”

Elsa balks.

“ _Why_?” Elsa echoes, fraught with disbelief. “I—well.“ She can’t remember the last time she felt this flustered. "The  _staring,_ for one,” she blurts.

“When?” asks Jack. “By who?”

He cannot be serious. “By _you_ ,” she answers, with as much calm as she can muster. “All day.”

( _Right now,_ she thinks, then swallows it.)

Jack blinks, rapidly. “Have I?” Elsa is about to blast right through his act, and then he goes and drops, “I haven’t noticed. I am… not used to being seen.”

“You…  _do_  realize how that sounds,” Elsa watches him warily. “Right?”

Jack runs a hand through his hair, then scratches once more at the back of his head. Elsa does  _not_  think of a small, lost puppy.

“Ah,” winces Jack, and—have mercy on her, but this kid is either an incredibly talented con man or the most socially absurd young man she’s ever met. “No?”

For a moment, Elsa hesitates. Her lips roll under, until she’s tasting salt and margarita and her permastay lipstick, and then Jack lets out a disarming, startlingly endearing groan.

“Jamie warned me this would happen,” she hears, though it’s hard to tell, exactly, what with the way he’s covered his face with his hands. He drags his hands down his pale, clean, freckle-less face with what is clearly embarrassment, and says, “My… American friend says that we call this a… intercultural? Excharge?”

“Er,” Elsa stutters, as everything falls into place. “Exchange.”

“Yes,” Jack lights up, relieved. “That.”

Elsa reassesses the situation as subtly as she can manage. Is he borrowing someone else’s clothes? (Or multiple people’s, given the drastic differences in sizes? That shirt is still small, and his shorts are just a little too big.  _The blue flannel looks right, though_.) Is all the stumbling over words a language barrier, then?

“Staring isn’t considered a sign of rudeness where you’re from?” Elsa asks, mostly just to fill the void. The DJ is working his skill at full volume now, so there isn’t any want of noise. She considers the possibility that Jack may not have many friends back home, and might still be looking for more while abroad. ( _Or he might just be friendly_ , sounds a voice, a persistent one that sounds suspiciously close to Rapunzel’s, or Anna’s; could be either, really.)

Elsa is beginning to worry how  _sheepish_ is starting to equate to  _cute_  in her mind.

“It can be,” he admits, scrunching his face. Elsa is starting to believe that this is as much apology as she is ever going to get when he adds, “If the other person is not staring back.”

And damn if that’s not some Grade A reverse-psychology, but Elsa somehow finds herself already staring into a rather large pair of disconcertingly blue eyes.

“Jack,” Elsa says slowly, and she takes a moment to hold onto the contact, just to let herself look him in the eye; it could be a moment of great vulnerability to look so directly into someone else’s gaze, with a great deal of exposure and openness and risk.

It could also be a moment of great power.

“What are you really here for?” she asks, and watches him.

His face really is something special, she acknowledges. Though physical attractiveness has never held the same draw of  _attraction_  for her as it has for others, she can note with a rather clear head that he is relatively attractive according to conventional standards... and fairly attractive according to those that are  _not_.

Jack is at least five inches taller than her, and that he has to tilt his head when he looks at her, but it isn’t meant to be intimidating or domineering or forceful. His skin looks shockingly smooth, like he has never seen a day in the sun; his hair and skin are both so light, it’s like his face is a moving canvas for the flashing lights of the dance floor—or whatever bright splash of color just happens to paint itself across his features, even if only just for a moment. His grin is a bit sharp, and very white, and spirals something (un)pleasantly in her stomach, and his eyes are actually rather beautiful and suddenly so much more intense, and Elsa is currently finding it rather difficult to breathe.

“Just,” Jack begins, though it looks difficult to speak. Like his lips are struggling to form the right words.

Elsa is not looking at his lips. 

His sudden laugh is self-deprecating, and the shooting pang in her chest comes out of nowhere, and yes, he is in fact leaning closer to her ear so he can murmur his answer instead.

“Just… learning,” he tells her softly, and Elsa is overwhelmed by what feels like a strange wave of sincerity. ( _Vulnerability_ , her mind whispers, but she squashes it.) “An… intercultural excharge.”

“Ah,” Elsa begins, pulling back, with a ready correction on the tip of her tongue. For some reason, she stifles it. “Well,” she starts, feeling immensely awkward, and a little foolish, and guilty, and rather like she should find a way to apologize, even if she’s not quite ready to actually say it again. “What do you like to drink at the Cape?”

Jack leans back slightly, to get a better look at her face. He is clearly perplexed.  _Great, Elsa_ — _you’ve accidentally hooked him into thinking that you’re insinuating something instead of merely making a nice gesture. Wonderful_. She’s just about to correct his line of thinking when his brows furrow, and his lips twist, and he stares at her with honest-to-goodness, pure and simple confusion:

“Drink?”

Elsa actually hesitates.

“He’ll have a water,” she tells a judgmental, scowling Gothel not more than four minutes later, with Jack standing so close beside her that their arms are consistently brushing. His energy has spiked, and his grin has widened, and his bright eyes keep flashing to hers like getting a glass of water from a bar is the most interesting thing that has ever happened to him, and Elsa can’t figure out for the life of her why he looks like he’s having time of his life.

* * *

 


	3. somebody's approval

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _8/1/15_. Two more after this one!

 

Elsa doesn’t even make it halfway back to their table before they’re spotted: Rapunzel and Anna take delight in the unexpected sight, then both immediately default into Hostess Mode, all genuine smiles and genuine enjoyment of others’ company. Jack seems just as perplexed by this warm reception as he was by Elsa's cold one, and the wave of relief and pleasant happiness that radiates from the loosening line of his shoulders is in no way an act. In the midst of their pleasantries, Elsa delicately slips away; she returns to their booth before anyone is the wiser, and resolutely does not look back.

Especially not to see whether he notices her absence. 

Elsa slides into her booth seat without so much as a word of explanation, and instantly finds herself facing off with a very knowing, very sly, very  _I’m onto you_  sort of look from Eugene, and you know what? This is exactly what she has been trying to avoid.

“Sorry your drink is flat,” Elsa scolds dryly, then slides it over to him, and the truth is that she isn’t very sorry at all.

Okay, a little bit.

But only a little.

To his credit, Eugene eases up on her after that, and Elsa is able to pretend that nothing much is out of the ordinary. Eugene does not sing and Elsa does not dance, and together they form the perfect team; while the others live out their wild youth on the dance floor, Elsa sits back with a cold drink and another solitary partner, and watches them with fondness and exasperation from afar.

She doesn’t even mind the noise so much, or the feeling of not being able to quite see straight through all the flashing lights. She’s not so bothered the number of people anymore, either, or the total lack of space. Elsa still doesn’t like the number of people she catches staring at her, but she likes spending time with Anna, and this is what Anna and their friends like to do. They dance.

Elsa sips her drink and watches them: even if Jack had supposedly, ludicrously wanted to come to this establishment to see  _her_ , then Anna and the others seem to be making the realization of that particular goal very difficult, indeed. 

Jack, as it turns out, does not actually know how to dance. 

//

(He does, however, learn quickly.)  
  
(Elsa does her best not to notice;   
it's easier when she leaves, turning in for an early night.)

//

And when he shows up at their spot at the beach the next day, right before the early morning rush, she supposes she shouldn't be surprised.

It’s maybe a few minutes after nine, and Elsa is reasonably comfortable in her beach chair, trying not to watch too closely as Anna and Kristoff play in the waves. There aren’t as many people here at the moment, and Elsa would like to give them at least some semblance of privacy if she can. Hiccup is probably sneaking in some work while Astrid goes for her long run, and Rapunzel and Eugene are probably at the post office, sending off this week’s letters to all of her pen pals. Ruff and the others are sleeping in and then going out for brunch and drinking off their hangovers, no doubt, so that leaves Elsa and Anna and Kristoff, enjoying the relative peace of the beach before everyone else wakes up and smells the ocean.

He waves when he sees her.

Elsa spots him right away, dressed in the same cargo shorts but with a different flannel, a slightly darker shade of blue. He’s not wearing any sandals again, and his steps are unhurried as he wanders over from the grassy path through which he’d disappeared the day before. As Elsa is watching all of this out of the corner of her eye from behind her sunglasses, it is hard to see whether or not he’s noted that she hasn’t waved back. 

“Good morning,” he says softly, when he nears her umbrella. It is one of only three in plain sight, an unfortunate beacon of vulnerability in what was supposed to be a sanctuary of sand. Elsa looks up at him from under the shade, fingers still pressed to the pages of her book, and resolutely does not consider the underlying reasons for why she’d chosen the one-piece bathing suit today. 

“Morning,” she replies, with the same cautious softness, and waits. She is not in the mood for games this morning. 

He nods instead to her book, a gentle shifting of the head. “This is different,” he begins, hands stuffed into his overly-large pockets. “From yesterday.”

It is; after Elsa left early the night before, she’d gone home and had finished her old one.

She’d still gone to bed before the others had returned.

Elsa runs her fingers over the page and takes comfort from the feeling of raised ink on fine paper—one of her old mindfulness tricks that still gives her perspective. The sun is warm, the air is moist, and the sounds are fresh out of a dream. She’s comfortable, even if she’s cautious, and she’s not worried, even if she is annoyed.

She remembers absently that her feet are bare in the sand, too.

“I finished the other one last night,” she offers, half-because she’s feeling gracious, and half-because she wants to see what he will do with it. Elsa’s predictions are not entirely wrong: it is a curious mix of guilt and disappointment on his face, like he’s not quite used to either. Elsa nearly huffs.

He’s a bit at a loss for words at first, until he scrunches his brows and settles on, “You left.”

“Early,” Elsa nods, twice. Straightforward and clean. Refusing to acknowledge his confusion. “I know.”

“You don’t like—dancing?” Jack asks, shifting one shoulder toward the path, as if that were the way towards the bar.  _Not with strangers_ , Elsa thinks.  _Not in crowds._  

_Not in front of others._

“I like to watch others dance,” Elsa responds, half with a shrug, and knows that her hope of him recognizing her dismissal is unfounded. She might be crossing her legs and repositioning her book on her thighs, staring at her open book ever so smoothly, but she could also turn her back on him completely and it may still not do the trick; it has already been noted that Jack is immune to these social cues. In fact, he seems rather oblivious to them entirely.

He seems rather intent on her legs.

A strange and swooping sensation wraps around her heart and plunges it downward, drags it right to the center of her stomach. He’s not leering at her, or doing anything  _untoward_ , but there is a definite flare of interest in his eyes as he takes in the lines of her calves and thighs, of appreciation as he rounds his gaze over curved ankles and knees and hips, and yes, this has gone on for long enough.

“Did you have fun?” Elsa asks, mostly because he seems too distracted to start any other line of conversation, and she’s ready for her heartbeat to slow down. His eyes jump back to hers, immediately, but the feeling of exposure doesn’t really go away.

 _One more minute_ , she thinks, and then she’ll ask him to leave.

He pauses, forming an answer, and  _it’s a bit of a waiting game, isn’t it?_  She’s never quite sure what she’s going to get, and when she  _does_ get something, it’s never what she expected.

“I—got distracted,” he admits, and Elsa feels a sharp, unnecessary pang of disappointment. Why does she even bother trying to make small talk, if he’s not going to pay attention? She shouldn’t fault him completely, due to the language barrier, and this particular moment is really not something to get up in arms about. 

“It’s fine,” Elsa tries not to snap or sigh or roll her eyes. “I said, ‘Did you have–’”

“Last night,” he interrupts, almost forcefully. “I came—for a reason.”

It takes Elsa a moment to think.

“Oh,” she says, slightly stunned, once she’s deciphered the look on his face. Perhaps he was paying more attention than she’d thought. “That’s—you don’t have to—”

“I’m—” Jack stumbles in, uncomfortable, and it’s only because his discomfort seems so much greater than hers that Elsa actually lets him speak. “I’m not very good—at,” he cuts off, and she can’t tell if his grimace is due to the meaning behind words, or the difficulty in producing them.

“This,” he says, and gestures between them. Elsa is speechless.

Had he been truly serious, then, when he’d told her that he’d come to see  _her?_ What had he been expecting, after the fiasco at the beach and then showing up at a bar with a rather forward declaration of interest, only to then dance with all of her friends? What exactly does he want from her?

 _What is ‘this’?_ she wonders. 

Elsa steels her spine. She can almost feel the line of her lips tightening, and then she gently turns away, shifts her gaze back toward her book.  _Indifference_ , her mind speaks, like a shield. 

“You know,” Elsa begins leadingly, with a precise thinness that almost makes her wince, herself. “Last night, I actually almost started believing that you were interested in becoming friends. But I'm not sure that's actually what you want," she adds, at the exact moment that she chooses to look up. 

She’s forced to look further down, however, because at some point when Elsa was not paying attention, Jack had crouched himself into the space beside her. The difference is a little jarring, even if he is still at least a foot or so away.

“I offended you,” he states, and—of all things—Elsa thinks that this is the first full sentence she has heard him say.

Elsa opens her mouth, closes it. “Yes,” she answers.

Jack hesitates. Slowly, she can see the thoughts unfurling in his mind;  _this isn’t just a language barrier_ , she realizes. 

“I wanted to see you again,” he tells her, so simply, and Elsa’s head reels in novelty and shock as he plows forward. “I went because—to see you, and talk to you, but—dancing is new. But. Not all dancing. Or things  _like_  dancing. But not the same as. It’s different. It’s—irresistible? Last night, I came to know you, but I got distracted by others, and I thought—maybe you would have also joined—” And, okay, this is where it gets dicey, where Jack starts stumbling once she starts to shift in her seat, when she closes her book and tries to prepare herself for whatever needs to be done to end— _this_. Whatever it is. “But then you left, and there were—so many people—and I didn’t know where—”

“Jack,” Elsa takes a deep breath, and thank god, he stops. “It’s fine.”

It’s not, but her tone doesn’t leave any room for argument. It’s weird. Because Elsa wants—Elsa actually sort of  _wants_  to like this guy? This person? This random stranger who can’t keep straight his basic vocabulary but hardly ever forgets his manners, or the ones that he's _learned_ at least; who shows up out of nowhere to make everyone laugh and bring some fresh light to their rag-tag party of beach-goers; who claims he doesn’t dance then spends the whole night learning.

Who declares with forthright certainty that he came for someone in particular, then promptly forgets her. 

(It stings a lot more than she thought it would, when she realizes just how much stock she’d put into those words. No matter how accidentally.  
She isn't unused to being left behind.)

Jack seems to pick up on the downward train wreck of her mood immediately; as if regret and awkwardness aren’t uncomfortable enough as it is already, the new smidge of embarrassment surely isn’t helping.

“I want to apologize,” he blurts, and Elsa resists another long-suffering sigh.

 _For what_? she wants to test him.   
 _Not necessary_ , she wants to dismiss.   
She pauses.

“I’ve truly never experienced dancing before,” he admits, as if this is the explanation she's been waiting for.

“Don’t you go to that bar fairly often?” she asks, because she cannot help it, even as she tells herself that this spark of curiosity is pointless. This is not what she actually wants to know, even if she  _is_ a bit—

“Jamie only dances at home, with friends,” he says. “We talk at bars only.”

Elsa frowns; absently, ridiculously, Elsa wonders if Jamie is a girl.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” she concedes, with her patience stretching out before her like a long, endless road. “But that’s also not any of my business. What I’m really wondering, to be perfectly honest,” Elsa insists, “is why you’ve made such a show of earning  _my_ interest, in particular." 

At last, Jack finally seems to understand. “Why I chose you?” he blinks. 

 _Well no_ , Elsa thinks in slight mortification. There isn’t any  _choosing_ , as far as she’s concerned, she’s just—

“Because you avoid the ocean.” 

 _Oh_. 

Elsa keeps her face carefully blank. It’s still almost surprisingly easy, even after so many years of practice. 

“That’s a rather interesting qualification,” she points out mildly, and tries to decipher why she is so annoyed.

Jack frowns again. He _feels_  her iciness, she knows this, but he doesn’t seem to understand the reasons behind it. It’s becoming something of a pattern, and Elsa is once again reminded that she could simply ask him to leave at any time.

“You spend your time—watching people,” he notes, almost thoughtfully. Elsa has to immediately remind herself that it’s not an  _accusation_ , that he knows nothing about her, that there is nothing  _wrong_ with sitting back or sitting out or— “You watch over them.”

Elsa doesn’t respond other than a slight inclination of her head, but Jack goes on, anyway. “You are prescriptive.” 

Her head snaps to the side. “Sorry?”

Jack looks more than a little embarrassed. And also a little like he finds this a little funny, at the same time, but only out of some strange, surreal disbelief at how _difficult_ this is, like this is so much harder than he thought it would be, and  _that_ is certainly a rather presumptuous opinion, if Elsa does say so herself, so she stops thinking altogether.

“Persistent?” he tries, and his mostly-controlled expression slides sloppily into a self-deprecating smirk, lopsided and wobbly, and Elsa frowns without realizing it. Her stomach is a little fluttery, which does her no good.

“Perceptive?” she offers.

“Yes,” Jack agrees immediately, as the smile slips away and his eyes turn very serious, indeed. “I like the way your eyes think.”

Elsa doesn’t really know what to make of that.

Jack suddenly leans closer, just until he is almost at the point of reaching the armrest of her chair, and Elsa very consciously stays still in her chair. His eyes are still very blue, and his hair looks very soft. 

“You make me very uncomfortable,” Elsa points out, though it doesn’t quite sound as stern as she’d like it to.

Jack’s grin subdues into another one of his sad, little smirks, the one that makes her think he really does know just how far out of his element he really is. “I would like to change that,” he confesses.

Inexplicably, she actually believes him. 

//

 _This is not weird_ , Elsa thinks with total determination, in the same breath that she is once again struck by the realization that  _this is so weird_. In retaliation, she grabs another handful of sand.

Elsa has decided that the best way she can get used to Jack’s presence, if not actually get to know  _him_ , is to spend time with him. Apparently, this does not require talking.

Apparently, this can be accomplished in the form of randomly building sandcastles, as evidenced by the last thirty-seven minutes or so.

(It started because they were sitting together in silence, and she kept noticing the way he would draw absently pictures in the sand with his fingers, meaningless symbols and shapes and mounds with no sense at all, and Elsa had guilelessly offered him one of Anna’s little plastic shovels and pails; it continued because she suggested using the damp sand instead of trying to use the dry, and the look of revelation on his face as he molded his first, mostly-perfect bucket tower was almost too touching to be real; it perpetuated, inevitably, into this wordless, downward spiral of joint sand-construction partnership because Elsa is not the person who can just idly sit by and watch someone painstakingly make an entire row of  _mostly-_ formed, almost-uniform sand castle towers, no matter how strongly she believes that everyone should have the chance to learn for themselves.

And also, perhaps, because in his thoughtful, narrow-sighted concentration—

The process  _did_  look rather appealing.)

He hadn’t noticed her attention to his efforts even after the book had been set aside, and Elsa appreciated the unexpected opportunity to simply observe him, unhindered. His hands had seemed very certain of their work, and his bangs kept falling into his eyes as he bent over his little towers, checking each groove and indentation for proper form. If Elsa didn’t know any better, she’d have said that he almost seemed confused by it, by the way his hair kept getting in the way.

And then Elsa had decided that enough was enough, and had wordlessly lowered herself down onto her hands and knees over the patch of beach just out of his reach. She felt his surprised gaze on her, even if she refused to return the contact—refused to acknowledge, even privately, her bare arms and legs, or the long braid that kept falling over her naked shoulder—and she seamlessly joined his endeavor with steady movements and a downturned, razor-sharp focus on the task at hand. She’d felt her cheeks flush as he grinned, unabashedly, but that was all.

They worked in silence, each staying in their own space, even when their shared project intersected in the sand. He’d seemed perfectly content to continue on with his mission of creating as many bucket towers as possible, until Elsa had abruptly started stacking them on a whim, and then that was all he wanted to do for the next fifteen minutes—just endlessly stack them off-center until they were left with an (im)penetrable wall of far too many mini-towers and honestly, what were they doing?

(What was  _she_ doing?)

And then Elsa had decided to start building a new base, all thick walls and precise measurements, with sharp corners and smoothed sides. She determinedly did  _not_ pause when Jack stopped to watch, even if only for a few curious minutes, and the next thing Elsa knew, they were building a veritable fortress, with Jack following her every cue, and prompting a few of his own. (The leaf-flag was his idea; the rock border was hers.)

So this is where Elsa is, now.

She wonders vaguely if Anna and Kristoff have noticed their strange little project yet. (What she is going to say to them, when they inevitably ask.) Elsa continues to build and design, lost in the mindless, pleasant hum of creation, the feeling of rough, smooth sand beneath her fingernails.

The two of them are surprisingly productive.

(And Jack seems so fascinated by the moat they’re currently making, the way the hidden pools of water rise up through the damp sand when they dig deep enough. Elsa had watched the way he’d stared at it the first time it’d happened, when his little plastic shovel had brushed against rough sand and tiny puddles, like he was trying to reconcile the two pieces in his mind. Elsa wonders once again where he’s come from, then remembers that she is perfectly okay with them not speaking.)

“Well, you two have certainly been busy,” says a voice, and Elsa abruptly turns, stamps down the automatic presence of alarm.

It’s only Eugene and Rapunzel, beach gear loaded under their arms. Eugene’s gaze is shrewd and knowing, and Rapunzel’s is needlessly proud. 

Jack releases a short, surprised little laugh, which makes Elsa realize just how short of breath she is, herself. It’s bizarre. 

“You can’t possibly fault an architect for building in the sand,” she points out dryly, and relaxes when Eugene rolls his eyes. Rapunzel’s gleam is still too self-satisfied, but Elsa is electing to ignore it. Jack looks doubly fascinated, but she is ignoring that, too.

“I’m more surprised that you’re allowing a  _team_ venture, more like.”

Elsa’s eyebrow slants shrewdly, and she can’t help the grin that slips onto her mouth. “I’ve built with you for the last time, Eugene Fitzherbert.”

“I’m just saying, if there’s no room in a castle for a treasure chest, then what’s the  _point_ —” 

“It’s nice to see you again, Jack,” Rapunzel smiles widely, beaming down at him with such an open ease of friendliness that for a moment Elsa is almost jealous. Anna shares the same skill.

“Hi, Rapunzel,” he smiles, bright and wide and open, and Elsa turns her eyes back to the castle below her. There’s a pile-up near the edge that’s grown far too high. “Good morning, you guys.”

“There you go! Listen to that slang,” says Eugene, and Elsa has the split-second clarity to wonder what  _other_ vocabulary Eugene has seen fit to teach him. “You’ll be talking like a local in no time.”

“We’re going to head off into the waves and catch up with Kristoff and Anna,” Rapunzel shares, already mostly done with unpacking her things. She’s being very careful to give the two of them a wide berth, and Elsa’s stomach feels a little strange, though she’s sure she’s overreacting because she can’t even pinpoint why. “Care to join us?”

“Maybe later,” Elsa brushes off, still staring at the work beneath her hands, and Rapunzel only nods pleasantly while Eugene chuckles.

“Jack?” Rapunzel offers, but Jack is already shaking his head. 

“No thanks,” he grins, and Elsa is irrationally, troublingly angry.

“See ya later,” Eugene winks, as Elsa’s annoyance blooms into full-blown irritation, which throbs and pulses as she glares at their retreating backs, and then is promptly interrupted by a shy, curious, “I thought you don’t swim?”

Elsa blinks, swiveling her gaze towards Jack. He’s sitting back, with both arms wrapped around one knee. The other leg is curled underneath, tucked out of harm’s way or any possibility of endangering the castle, and Elsa is momentarily struck by the ridiculousness of what they’re doing, again.

“I don’t,” Elsa snaps, then nearly winces. “Not usually. I  _can_ ,” she clarifies, softened, “But I prefer not to.” Elsa doubts he’d be interested in hearing how her hair turns green in swimming pools, or how saltwater stiffness never seems to fully leave from the thickness of her hair. How her skin burns but rarely tans, and how the heat makes it hard to breathe. 

He seems to consider her words awfully carefully, nevertheless.

//

There isn’t much small talk, or much eye contact, but Elsa does seem to grow more comfortable with the idea of him being around, at least.

Which is a good thing, she tells herself, because the others are quite delighted to see him when they arrive. It’s the early afternoon, and they are moving with various degrees of energy and sluggishness. Elsa suspects that their sunglasses were put to use even before they’d ventured outdoors, and allows herself a moment of judgment and amusement, then lets her exasperation float on by. She is grateful for the extra company, after all.

They converse with Jack easily, and draw out answers to questions that Elsa had never even considered. He spends most of his days at the Whale and Dolphin Research Center, where his friend Jamie is an intern. He’s a vegetarian with a sweet tooth, who gushes over Rapunzel’s brownies with such adoration that it’s almost too much, in Elsa’s opinion, although no one else seems to mind. He’s never ridden a bike, but seems eager to learn, and gratefully accepts Hiccup’s offer to teach him. He hasn’t been to the city arcade, or the mini-golf course, and before Elsa knows it Jack has been wrangled into their group schedule for nearly the entire week. 

He only mentions his family—host family??—a few times, and never singles them out by name. Elsa gets the impression that they are possibly very old, and traditional, and not very much in love with the idea of Jack making nice with any wild youths. (Remembers his utter naiveté over alcohol, and dancing, and can’t help but feel like she may understand their concern.) He listens very attentively to everything anybody says, and looks very thoughtful about each of his questions, even the very simple ones. 

He has stopped staring, she’s noticed.

//

“I can help with that,” Jack offers, even as he’s already taking the cooler from Elsa’s hands and loading it into the back of the rental car.  _He’s stronger than he looks_ , Elsa notes, absently.

She’s still peeved that she’s been roped into this mess, so she doesn’t say anything back. She nods her head and waits for him to step back out of the way as she closes the back door, and then makes her way to the driver’s door, a silent storm brewing—both inside and out.

“Thanks again—for the ride,” Jack offers graciously as he slides into the passenger seat and buckles in, just as the first drops of rain start to fall. Elsa’s almost half-surprised; she was beginning to think that Jack was ignorant in  _all_ manners of human interaction, but it seems that being driven around is something of the familiar. Elsa turns the key in the ignition, and tries not to let her resentment overwhelm her.

“You’re welcome,” Elsa replies, and wonders what happened to the warmth she’d only just begun to grow.

(Anna owes her, undoubtedly, for this mess; she knows better than offer her sister up as some sort of taxi-driver. No matter how selfless  _Anna_  may be, she should know that Elsa’s pragmatism limits her altruism to a much smaller circle than Anna’s, which includes, oh— _everybody_.)

“Do you usually leave the beach earlier than the others?” Jack asks, because he obviously doesn’t know what’s good for him. The others have all retreated to one of the beachside restaurants, their towels and chairs loaded into the back of this car for safekeeping. Elsa is supposed to be joining them in an hour or so, after a warm shower and a change of clothes.  _And an umbrella_ , Elsa thinks, as the rain comes down.

Elsa shrugs. “I usually arrive earlier.” 

“Is it the heat?”

“And the crowds,” she answers, without thinking.

Jack considers this for a few minutes, and Elsa naively assumes that they’ll be able to listen to radio in peace. (She usually doesn’t, but Anna had left the volume on, and Elsa wasn’t about to turn it off if it was going to fill some of the awkwardness in the void. The periodic tick of the windshield wipers only add to the tension, instead of lessening it.) The clouds are grey and dark above them, and Elsa can’t deny that she sort of loves it.

“Thanks again for the ride,” Jack repeats, slightly nervous, and Elsa glances at him out of the corner of her eye. The beach traffic has been left closer to the beach, but there are still a few people out and about on each and every small, innocuous backstreet. Elsa keeps her eyes on the road.

“It’s on the way,” she answers, almost tonelessly in the sudden wave of her disappointment. (Honestly, why is she on this vacation at all? The work at the studio is only piling up, the clients are surely calling, and Elsa is hardly spending any time relaxing. At this point, the only reason she’s here is so Anna won’t worry,  _but_ , Elsa can’t help but think,  _would she even notice if—?_ )

“Do you like dolphins?” Jack asks, unbidden with open curiosity. Elsa is so taken aback that she actually answers.

“I don’t know much about them,” she admits, then considers it. “But yes. I admire their intelligence.”

Jack mulls over her words, and Elsa tries to focus. “Have you ever gone whale-watching?” She frowns. 

“I haven’t."

“I think you’d like Jamie,” Jack announces, with a decisive nod that reminds Elsa of Anna.

Elsa gives up any pretense of following his train of thought. “Jamie is your intern friend?” she asks, as she turns the wheel around a bend. Almost there.

“Yes,” Jack grins, almost devious. “I think you should meet him.”

 _Him_ , Elsa’s brain echoes, and she blanks. Tightens her fingers just slightly, over the wheel.  _I don’t think so_ , says the nervous pitter-patter in her stomach, the one that does not like to listen to reason. Elsa, on the other hand, casually says, “Maybe one day.”

Jack grins at her like she’s just handed him a gift and, just like that, he’s staring again. Elsa actually allows herself a scoff; to her dismay, it sounds much more like a startled laugh. 

“You are so strange,” she murmurs, and doesn’t even flinch when she realizes that she’s said it aloud. 

“So are you,” Jack laughs, with something like fondness, and Elsa is left speechless for the rest of the car ride. 

// 

“Thanks,” Jack says, and the car door is still open, so he’s letting rain into her rental. Elsa takes a periphery glance at the dark rain-spots staining his shirt, at the water slamming into the side of his face, and decides the annoyance isn’t worth it.

“Don’t mention it,” she answers, because really.  _Don’t_.

Jack only smiles. “See you around, Elsa,” he says, eyes warm, especially in the surrounding darkness of a rainstorm, and gently closes the car door before Elsa has had a chance to manage her goodbye.

She’s left staring at him through the rain-streaked window, heart in her stomach, and wondering what the hell’s just happened. 

//

It’s a little more than a few hours later when Elsa is seated at the restaurant with the others, still comfortably warm and dry and with clean hair. Her umbrella is mostly devoid of rainwater by now, and she’s drinking hot herbal tea, and all of it means that Elsa is sated, and happy, and comfortable, and has almost completely forgotten about their unexpected visitor.

Which also means that this is the precise moment that he chooses to arrive. 

“ _Again_ ,” Elsa mutters beneath her breath, but it’s drowned out by the happy cries of those around her, the sound of wood scraping wood as someone pulls up another chair. Anna is the only one to glance Elsa’s way. 

 _You okay???_ is the text she receives half a minute later;  _Yes, I’m fine_ , is what she texts back, when her anger has retreated into a simmer. 

Jack isn’t even sitting next to her, but Elsa can feel herself stiffening with anger. Most of her companions are tipsy enough not to notice the growing tension in the line of her shoulders as they all carry on with their genuine enjoyment of the evening, but Anna’s occasional glance is enough to bring Elsa’s edginess to another, possibly unwarranted, level.

 _I’m going to go out on the deck for a bit_ , Elsa texts, and quickly follows with,  _Alone, please. I just need a few minutes to breathe_.

 _I’m okay_.

Anna won’t believe her, but enough years of practice have trained her to respect Elsa’s wishes; she pastes on her favorite, most disarming distraction of a smile, and politely excuses herself from the table.

The veranda is on the other side of the restaurant, which is perfect because Elsa could use the additional steps it takes to reach the sliding door. The slight drizzly haze of rain means that Elsa is allowed to think with the shore in peace, or at least she thinks so, until the sound of the door opening behind her jars her back to reality.

“Anna, I told you, I’m—” she cuts off, eyes narrowed. Her heart rate spikes, and in the deafening beats, all she hears is an endless stream of  _how dare you, how dare you, how dare you—_  

“Hey,” he says softly, carefully closing the door shut behind him. He almost looks meek, which only feeds her anger, which sends blood rushing to her fingertips with an  _urge_ to do something very uncharacteristic. “Sorry, I—there’s something I want to show you.”

“You couldn’t have shared it inside with the others?” Elsa jerks her head back towards the door, towards the dining room that’s too far around the corner for them to see. She half-thinks it’d be better to make a break for it; she half-thinks it’d be the perfect time to throw a punch, with _out_  any witnesses.

“It isn’t theirs,” Jack answers simply, like he’s confused that this is even a question, and just as Elsa is about to lose it, he reaches into an inner-pocket of his blue flannel shirt and gently pulls out her mother’s missing necklace.

Elsa stares.

“Where did you get that?” she whispers, once she realizes that she still has her tongue, that the world hasn’t swallowed her whole. Her fingers are clenching onto the wooden railing behind her, and she can’t feel the rain on her face, but she feels the warmth against the cold. She sees the light blush on Jack’s cheeks.

“I have friends in the—research lab,” he reminds her, and Elsa isn’t convinced, isn’t prepared, but Jack is shrugging so nonchalantly, and holding the silver chain so gingerly in his hands, holding it out for her to see. “Interesting stuff—turns up in the cove all the time.”

 _Turns up_ , Elsa’s mind repeats, thoughtlessly. Her lips part of their own accord, and her feet carry her closer, just a few more steps, as she wordlessly reaches out. Jack carefully drops the necklace into her hand, and steps back. 

Elsa turns it over in her fingertips, lets the cool feeling of delicate metal pool in her hand, takes comfort in its familiar weight and shape. A single snowflake for a pendant, an inside joke her parents had always shared, but Elsa had never learned the story to. 

Her heart aches. 

“You can’t just buy my friendship, you know,” Elsa warns him, cut from pain and confusion and instinct, then deflates a little at the sharp look that passes over his face, feels a whoosh of anger sweep right out from under her as he lowers his gaze away from her eyes.  _Buy my friendship_ , Elsa’s mind replays, a sinking sensation worming deeper into her stomach.  _With what?_ she wonders, frowning.  _Acts of kindness? Common courtesy?_

_Smiles?_

“I don’t… I admit, that I don’t—know very much about making friends,” Jack states, his tone impressively clear and level. His voice carries an interesting note of disappointment, one that makes Elsa want to shrink into herself, “But even I wouldn’t… I know better than that.”

Elsa bites her lip, and wonders how best to apologize.

“Thank you,” she starts, haltingly, staring at the snowflake in her hand. “For finding my mother’s necklace. You should—Anna will be so happy to know that it’s safe. Again. I—”

“It’s all right,” Jack says, even and soft, and Elsa’s eyes flick upwards, tight with some unnamed pain; she’s never seen that particular smile on his face before. “I should be heading out,” he announces suddenly, as Elsa’s stomach gives an awful lurch. “I only—I just came by because Jamie and I… when we found the necklace.” Jack nods a little, with an off-center tilt of self-deprecation, of disappointment, and Elsa’s chest promptly caves.

“I’m sorry,” Elsa rushes out, just a little too loudly, too quickly. She’s afraid that maybe he doesn’t understand. “Jack, I’m sorry, I—this isn’t really like me,”  _yes, it is, don’t lie_ , “and I—I don’t mean to be ungrateful, or rude, or—”

“It’s okay,” Jack shrugs, smile small, but his face seems closed off, a little more distant, and Elsa feels hopelessly confused. “It’s no problem.”

“Thank you for returning the necklace,” she blurts out, again, before she can ruin this mess any further, and is furiously disappointed at how ruthlessly rooted she is to her spot. Jack is already stepping back to leave.

“Yeah, no,” Jack is shrugging easily, a quirk that is uncannily similar to Eugene’s, and he grins with a, “Not a problem.” Elsa stares, silently torn. “I’ll be heading out now.”

“Jack—” Elsa calls, with a funny little pain right beneath her sternum. “Wait. I didn’t mean to—”

“Have a nice night,” he offers, with one final shrug, and proceeds to turn and leave, right down the wooden staircase off to the side of the deck. He walks directly down onto the beach, onto the little path that will take him underneath the overhanging deck, and by the time Elsa decides that she should follow him— _races down the stairs in sandals, delicate chain clutched tightly in her hand, ducks under the ceiling of wood and steps onto soft, cool, rocky sand_ —Jack has already rounded the far corner of the building, and left.

Elsa stands alone underneath the porch-deck of this little local restaurant, her mother’s rescued necklace in hand, and feels the rainy mist on her cheeks turn colder.

Absently thinks that, maybe,  _Jack_  isn’t the one who should be trying so hard to earn somebody’s approval.

//

Decides, later that night, as she sits alone on the private dock behind their condo under the clouds and stars, that at least she still has a few more days to try to make it up to him.

 

* * *

 

 


	4. pragmatism and goodwill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _8/1/15_.

 

It’s morning, even though there wasn’t much of a dawn. The thick clouds and misty fog meant that the sunrise was painted with endless gray, and even now, an hour or so later, the waves still seem restless against the rocks. Elsa is hiding in her car.

Well, to be fair, she’s really only trying to avoid the rain; the person she is waiting for, on the other hand, might possibly be trying to avoid more than just the weather.  
  
Her book rests in her lap, open but mostly forgotten, while Elsa stares out the window. The engine is off and long-since cooled, and the world is a haze of pattering rain and swirling fog. It’s much thicker this far up the coast, where the Whale and Dolphin Research Center sits on the rocky shore.

She hasn’t seen Jack for two days.

No sooner than she’d resolved to make amends, Elsa found that he was all but impossible to find. Since the first storm and that truly awkward, regrettable encounter, the rain had not let up for more than a matter of hours, at best. This meant that Elsa and her company had mostly been confined to the indoors, which also meant that there was no sunny beach spot for Jack to just coincidentally stumble across. Elsa had come to accept that she was just going to have to wait for the weather to clear, or for their paths to inevitably cross in town. There were only so many places that the residents could go, after all, and surely they were to run into one another eventually?

But two days had passed, and Elsa learned differently. While she’d begun to notice familiar faces on the street, and recognize regulars at restaurants, there was one face in particular who Elsa continually managed to miss. They’d even frequented his recommended bar, which was truly the most decent one around, according to both lore and experience, but—nothing.

Which is how Elsa had found herself here, waiting alone in her car in the early, early morning, settled in the mostly empty parking lot of the one place she knows holds any ties to Jack aside from a grassy path on the shore and a dance floor in a dive bar.

Visiting hours aren’t for another half hour yet, but the lights have been on inside the facility for quite some time, and Elsa’s attention is drawn to the far side of the docks, to the shape of a young man with light brown hair.

//

“Good morning,” says Elsa politely, and if her tone is a little too professionally-clipped for a hazy seaside morning in the middle of a supposed vacation, then it’s only a default of habit. Not impatience. “I’m hoping to find someone by the name of Jamie. I believe he is an intern at this facility.”

The young woman standing behind the reception desk looks like she might be an intern, herself: well into her teens, but barely on the brink of adulthood, if Elsa would hazard a guess. ( _I am not making judgments_ , she argues, as a distinctly Anna-like voice warns her against categorizing people according to first impressions yet  _again_ ; scrupulous observation is simply just one of the ways Elsa navigates the world around her.) The name printed onto her shirt-front reads  _Pippa_ , and she’s still looking a bit dazed; Elsa wonders how often they receive visitors at such an early hour.

Especially ones as determinedly patient as she.

“Oh,” says the young woman, easily, though there is an awkward tilt of silence that follows, like she’s been struck with a brief moment of hesitation and it’s come as a bit of a surprise, even to herself. Then, “Yes, Jamie works here. Well—our Jamie. I guess we’ll have to see if it’s the one you’re looking for.” Pippa offers a little smile as she checks a clipboard, seemingly embarrassed at her stumbling of words, and Elsa notices a faint blush tinging her cheeks.   
  
“Sorry,” Pippa rushes out, flipping through the pages, which keep sticking together. Her voice has the lilt of a friendly smile, even if she keeps her eyes on her task. “Our coffee runner hasn’t arrived yet, so we’re still on our way to fully functional.”

 _It’s fine_ , Elsa swallows, because it doesn’t hold the same sway of friendly small-talk that she’d like to reciprocate. Anna has always been so much better at this sort of thing.  
  
“I understand,” she settles on, though she tries her best to insert a sense of warmth. “I’m afraid I’m here rather early.” Never mind the fact that it’s already two days too late.  
  
“No, no, it's—hm,” Pippa’s finger settles on a line of her spreadsheet, and her lips purse, suddenly. Her gaze is cast down onto her sheet, but they seem strangely unfocused, like she’s not actually reading from it at all. “Yeah, it looks like Jamie is scheduled to go out on a dive this morning. He should be suiting up in the back, but if it’s something that might not take very long, you might be able to catch him. Or if it’s something that I could help you with…?”

Elsa can’t quite pinpoint the strange sense of awareness that is steadily creeping into her fingertips. She smiles quite demurely, feels precisely when the spark ignites in her eyes— _the one taught to her by her mother and father, the one that speaks volumes in unfaltering politeness_ —and gently insists, “Thank you, but I’ll only need a minute of his time. I’d be just as happy to come back later, if it’s more convenient.”  
  
Pippa nods and smiles, though it seems to be lacking that same measure of genuineness that it’d offered before. Elsa wonders what she’d done to provoke such a change.  
  
“Course,” Pippa chirps in agreement, then vaguely points to the door leading to an office, or at least further into the facility. She starts inching her way toward the back, even as she finishes her explanation. “I’ll go see if I can find him.”

Elsa would have said thank you, if Pippa hadn’t all but run away.  
  
So she occupies her waiting time by roaming the stacks of brochures in the lobby, and wondering at the fact that Jack apparently spends so much time here.  _Is he a student?_ she wonders.  _Or a researcher?_ She’d never thought to ask. He looks rather young, but she’d never gotten the impression that he’d been busy with any coursework. Not that she’d been considering it too clearly. It occurs to her, belatedly, that it’s quite possible that she’d have had just as much luck in her mission, if not more, if she’d simply asked Pippa for Jack’s name instead.  
  
It’s as she’s musing over the quark boards behind the desk and covertly searching for Jack’s name amongst the spreadsheets and schedules that she hears voices from the back.  
  
_I told you—I don’t recognize her_ , someone hisses, obviously failing to be quiet. Elsa turns her eyes back to the stacks of brochures and pretends to be immensely interested in a pamphlet on whale-watching. Splendid.  
  
“Hi,” says a voice, rather suddenly, and Elsa abruptly turns to find both Pippa and a young man with brown hair striding forward from the doorway. Jamie, as she presumes him to be, is dressed in a wetsuit and sturdy-looking water shoes. He appears to have already been in the water, and he is definitely the one Elsa had earlier spotted on the docks. His voice is very bright, as is his smile, but Elsa can’t deny the strange aura of edginess that seems to be filling the lobby between the three of them. It’s all very strange, and Elsa’s usual sense of suspicious curiosity rises to new and disturbing heights. “I’m Jamie,” he introduces, eyes wide and extending a pleasant hand. However young Jack may look, Jamie appears even more boyish, yet Elsa is distinctly impressed by the way he carries himself, and the professional, developed sort of confidence that is so rare in so young a person. She immediately wonders how Jamie and Jack had come to know one another. “I hear I might be able to help you with something?” he asks, shaking her from her thoughts.  
  
Elsa offers him a smile, doing her very best to be disarming. Jamie seems quite perplexed by her presence, if not downright inconvenienced, and Elsa again wonders if she should have waited until later this afternoon—but she has so little  _time_.

“Thank you,” she says immediately, and remembers to turn on her politest of charms. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take up too much of your time, but the truth is that I’m rather hoping you might be able to help me find someone by the name of Jack.”

Elsa’s gaze stays true to Jamie’s, but years of careful observation mean that she has well enough practice to notice the way Pippa tenses, the way she suddenly occupies her eyes and her hands with paperwork over the desk. Jamie is more well-versed in the art of subtlety, it seems.  
  
“Jack?” Jamie smiles, all warmth and genuine fondness, and when he laughs Elsa has the impression that she should be relieved, or simply intrigued, but his eyes are still a bit too keen. “Yeah, he’s usually around. ‘Fraid he hasn’t been by in a couple of days though,” Jamie explains, his tone awfully light.  
  
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s my current dilemma,” Elsa replies, and smiles sweetly in the spirit of commiseration. She is very careful to match his lightness. “You see, I’m only in town for a matter of days, and I’m hoping to connect with him again before I leave.” She deliberates, just for a moment, on the possible advantages of straying from her normal realm of privacy. “I’d very much like the opportunity to offer him an apology, actually.”

Pippa’s head snaps up from her busywork, and Elsa’s well-trained gaze loses its focus just for a moment. The look they share is one of startled, mutual, stifled surprise, and then Pippa is purposefully ruffling through her papers, and fooling no one. Jamie has an unreadable expression on his face when she returns her attention to him, but she sees the faintest curl of a grin.

It occurs to her then that she has just committed a serious act of rudeness. “ _Oh_ —” she half-gasps, and almost slides a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she practically blurts, mortified by her absentmindedness. “I just realized I haven’t given you my name.”  
  
“Elsa,” Jamie answers, shocking her into silence, her hand still poised in the space between them. Pippa is looking at him rather shrewdly as well, like she’s not sure what he’s doing, or whether she should be playing along— “I had a feeling when I came in,” Jamie shrugs, and doesn’t seem very affected at all. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Elsa is truthfully not very hopeful about what such stories might have entailed; she has not represented her best self, these last few days. It’s this reluctance to confirm or deny that keeps her silent, and her slight horror that keeps the polite, strained smile plastered to her face.

As if sensing Elsa’s internal plight— _and perhaps his perceptiveness is well-founded in evidence, who knows?_ —Jamie offers her a reassuring nod and says, “I actually have no idea when I’ll see him again, but ’ll definitely pass along the message.”  
  
“Thank you,” Elsa offers genuinely, grateful for the return to a familiar social script. “I’d really appreciate that.”  
  
“Is there a number he could reach you at?” Jamie asks suddenly, and Elsa blinks in surprise.  
  
“Yes,” she answers slowly, and dutifully takes the pen and pad of paper that PIppa gently slides her way. “I… was under the impression that Jack didn’t use a cell phone?” Then, more carefully, “Is this facility the best place for him to make or receive a call? Or with his host family, perhaps?”   
  
“Well, I don’t know about the phone so much, but he definitely uses the TV here enough,” Jamie answers pleasantly, watching her write her information in a fine hand. He doesn’t mention anything further about a host family. “But yeah, until we finally buy the guy a cellphone, this place is pretty much his landline.”

And Elsa doesn’t really understand it, when Pippa smacks her forehead with her palm.

//

The afternoon passes by slowly, and without any further incident.

It’s rather boring, and Elsa is fairly angry with herself for wasting away a perfectly good vacation. She is supposed to be  _relaxing_. Not growing frustrated over a lead-less, stagnant, perfectly pointless hunt for a young man she has hardly even met, no matter how badly she has wronged him.

(Her mother’s necklace rests comfortably beneath the collar of her blouse, a cold weight against her skin. She hasn’t told Anna yet, hasn’t seen any reason to, and she has the sense of mind to once again wonder  _why?_  She can’t remember the reason its presence is still an unnecessary secret, the one that tasted mildly of embarrassment, that she’d clung onto that night on the private docks under the stars, when this search was just a vague and fuzzy notion in her mind beneath the stars—before it’d molded and solidified into this impossible project, this supremely unusual game, and Elsa is not  _obsessed_ , she is merely  _meticulous_ _ **.**_ )

She dines with the others, and lounges with them, and plays board games with Anna. Feeling trapped and listless by one too many rainy days, the rest of the group decides to go to see a movie. Perhaps it’s luck, or fate, that the only decent theater is some miles away and, as much as Elsa would prefer to be the one driving them, she cannot deny that there are a far greater many things she would rather do.  
  
So it’s as she’s in line at register for some light grocery shopping, of all things, that he runs into her. 

//  
  
He quietly follows her out of store with two grocery bags in hand—one of which is hers, as he’s offered to carry it home—and he’s as stilted and awkward and earnest as ever, but with a touch more reticence that reminds Elsa with crystal-sharp clarity of all of the expertly-repressed guilt she has been concealing over the last two days. His smiles are all close-mouthed and careful and  _it’s only been four minutes_ , she reminds herself, carrying on the perfunctory, admittedly one-sided small-talk with pained determination.  _It’ll be better once you’ve apologized_.

Which she hasn’t done yet, for some reason.  
  
The modest grocery store is a few, fair blocks from their apartment. It is the largest one in town, and is only just big enough to be a rather small link in a chain. The occasional trip usually offers Elsa a nice, long walk, with plenty of time to let her sort through her thoughts while she walks along quaint residential streets and big open yards with lush, heavy-hanging trees. Somehow, even after so much time for thoughtfulness, she still feels woefully unprepared.   
  
“How have you been?” she asks politely, and marvels at the incredible, unexpected  _need_  she feels, to know. “Anna and the others have rather missed your dancing,” she adds quickly, then quite forcefully and genuinely wants to kick herself.  
  
Jack smiles another close-lipped smile, tight and cautious, and Elsa hates this, hates what she’s done to ruin the easiness of his expression. She feels a bit like a monster.   
  
“Good,” he responds lightly, with a brightness that falls a little short and a little shallow of what she’s grown accustomed to. She’d had no idea how much a difference it could make, seeing someone’s teeth. “I’ve had—some things that needed—taking care of. But it’s fine, now.”  
  
“Did those things include restocking your kitchen?” Elsa stiffly nods toward his comically stuffed brown paper bag. She is honestly so, so bad at this.  
  
“Er,” Jack hesitates, perplexed, trying to pick up the arbitrary context from her horrible social cues. “Yes,” he decides, slowly, as if he fears this is the wrong answer. “I promised Jamie I would replace some of his food.”  
  
Elsa and Jack walk in stilted silence for a few minutes, each facing only forward. He’s slowed his pace to match her rather languid one, even if his legs are longer than hers, and she wonders if he’s realized yet how miserably she is stalling. Or buying time, perhaps.   
  
_Do you eat a lot of his meals?_ she wants to ask, which is quickly followed by,  _Do you often visit for his TV?_ Such bizarre questions, without any point, so Elsa heavily sighs and decides that  _it’s as good a time as any_.  
  
“I suppose he told you that I stopped by this morning,” she mentions, rather offhandedly, and only glances for the briefest of moments at his face out of the corner of her eye. Jack stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk, and she pretends not to notice.  
  
“I… wasn’t expecting to be around today,” Jack admits slowly, eyes trained on the concrete in front of him. “And then he sent out the signal, and I met with him, before becoming—into town.” Jack is biting his lip in serious consideration when Elsa looks his way, and in his concentration she has a moment to appreciate the tiniest bit of humor in his choice over words for a simple phone call. “I was planning to find you after I bought Jamie’s Hot Pockets.”  
  
_And_   _it’s little things like this_ , she thinks, thoroughly disarmed. It’s inconsequential things like this that remind her that Jack is, indeed, just another regular, if not exceedingly awkward (endearing?) young man. One who makes sand castles on the beach and eats his friends’ fridges clean, and filches off their TV and cable.

( _Who pays attention to each and every word, who pushes for the truth even when Elsa is not so sure he’s entitled to it; who likes to learn and make new acquaintances, who devotes as much time to learning courtesy as he spends following it; who goes out of his way to present himself to her in ways that make her feel more comfortable, who has given her nothing but space for the last two days; who has given her the unexpected gift of a precious item thought forever lost._  
  
_Who looks her directly in the eyes, when many others would not_.)

“Jack, listen,” Elsa says suddenly, as her chest constricts with an unusual burst of uncertainty and a much more familiar frame of guilt. Jack starts, but they both continue walking, and Elsa pushes forward before he has any chance to intervene. “I’m really sorry. I’m actually—well, I’m actually rather  _incredibly_ sorry, both for how awful I’ve acted, and for how long it’s taken me to find the nerve to say it. I really don’t know how I can thank you for what you’ve done, and I’ve been told that my protective instincts are sometimes a bit extreme—”  
  
“Thank you,” he interrupts, sounding very uncomfortable indeed, “But it’s okay.” His grin has an amused bite to it, but it’s a bit stiff. “Jamie says I still—have a lot to learn.”  
  
“About Americans?” Elsa guesses, then curses her curiosity. Wonders, for the hundredth time, just what exactly Jack has been sharing with Jamie.  
  
Jack bites his lip again, looking dissatisfied. “Yeah,” he agrees distractedly, and Elsa suddenly has the wild notion that perhaps he was thinking about some other group entirely. Like. Women, perhaps.   
  
She is understandably quite mortified, when she unexpectedly begins to flush.  
  
“If it’s any consolation,” she finds herself saying, if only to distract herself from her own ridiculousness. “I’ve still got a bit to learn about people, myself.”  
  
Jack bites back a grin, and it’s the first true-to-character smile she’s seen all day.

It’s in the spirit of renewed, rekindled common courtesy that allows Elsa to agree to Jack’s offer to carry her bag up the stairs for her, and sheer momentum that has her invite him inside to help drop off her things. It’s an inherent risk, she thinks, in allowing a bona fide stranger into her apartment at all, so it’s either madness or curiosity, obviously, that lets him make it past the door.

And it’s strictly politeness and gratitude that lets her offer him a refreshing beverage once he’s helped her unpack. Not everyone will humor her sense of organization on the refrigerator door shelves, after all.  
  
She’s not really sure what it is, actually, that compels her to offer him to leave his groceries in her fridge, just for the time-being, just until they finish off this next pitcher of lemonade.

The fact that she asks him to stay for dinner, too, is based more on the presence of convenience, the presumption that to have eaten so much of Jamie’s food means either a healthy appetite or a lack of resources or both. He’s never eaten orzo before, or quinoa, and honestly, if this boy is a vegetarian, how on earth is he getting his nutrients? (Jamie’s Pepperoni Hot Pockets? Please. Does he know what pepperoni _is?_ ) It’s pragmatism and goodwill and a genuine desire to atone for her thoughtlessness that she offers to make an extra plate (or three) for him for dinner. The conversation, as she boils water and teaches him how to check for appropriate softness and texture, is purely natural, given the circumstances. It’s organic and simple, she tells him,  _she thinks_ , it’s nothing incredibly exciting, but satisfying all the same.  
  
It’s less surprising than she’d thought it be, but still shocking. It’s new and interesting. It’s fun.  
  
And it’s more than a little awkward when she looks out the window and realizes that there’s a sunset on the horizon, that the door handle is turning and that Anna and Kristoff are shuffling in through the entryway in shared giggles over some scene from their movie, and there’s Jack and Elsa, sitting at adjacent seats at the small kitchen table by the large sliding door-windows and the balcony, chatting casually like nothing at all is out of the ordinary, and the dam that was holding back all of Elsa’s carefully-concealed curiosities and presumptions is promptly blown to bits, leaving a great deal of confusion and embarrassment and meaningful avoidance of eye contact in its wake.

It’s only to be expected, really, when Anna invites Jack to join them for a campfire on the beach.

* * *

 

 


	5. the stars are brighter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _8/1/15_.

 

The others don’t make a big deal of Jack already sitting around the bonfire when they arrive, but Elsa knows that they are all natural-born liars.

Eugene has had his fair share of run-ins with the law, and Rapunzel is no stranger to secrets. Astrid is incredibly clever, and Hiccup can be very persuasive when he wanted to be. Elsa doesn’t know Ruff and her crew as well as Anna does, which majorly spares her from a surprising percentage of their teasing, but their team also has a shared, collectively-learned _look_ that makes someone think twice before entrusting them with precious information about one’s personal life.

Jack isn’t staring at her.

This is obviously an improvement, of course.

Obviously.

 

//

 

He _is_ , however, sitting rather close to her.

The fire is wild and fierce, tamed expertly by Hiccup and Eugene, and the radiating heat presses into Elsa’s skin with a delightful sort of burn. Her face and hands are pleasantly warm.

But the ocean breeze brings a chill, leaving a strange and an unusual imbalance that should make Elsa uncomfortable, or at least feel off-center, but does not. Everyone is bundled with long sleeves and layers, and a few shared blankets, but Elsa isn’t the kind to wear overly large, hooded sweatshirts like her companions. She’s wearing a simple pullover jacket, as sleek and soft as she prefers, and from a high-quality athletic store she knows she can trust; Anna drowns in her worn-out, faded college hoodie, and looks pleased as punch.

Jack is wearing a blue hoodie, perhaps just a touch too small. Elsa wonders if it’s Jamie’s.

(Has he told Jamie where he was going? Did Jamie offer him his clothes, or advice—or anything else for that matter? These are dangerous possibilities to be considering, especially when there are only scant inches between them in their folding chairs.)

Conversation is flowing, and marshmallows are burning, and Elsa decides that she is, for once, relaxed.

 

//

 

So maybe it’s the warmth of the fire, or maybe it’s the sense of relief that comes with finally having made the proper overture of apology, but Elsa is honestly not expecting Anna’s scheming to make an appearance tonight.

(She should know better.)

Elsa is currently quite rooted to her chair, perfectly content to spend the night in her preferred space with very little movement, simply watching the others amble around the fire, or wrestle on the beach, or start an impromptu game of makeshift volleyball in the dark. Elsa likes to watch.

Since she clearly has no intention of moving, and since it is well-enough known amongst her friends that this could be the case, it takes a surprisingly short amount of time—only an hour or so, at best—before the sunset passes and the resulting twilight lures a few of her companions from their chairs and off into adventures at various parts of the beach. (Hiccup wants to explore one of the paths he’d found a quarter-mile down, and Astrid won’t let him wander in the dark  _alone_ , naturally.) Ruff and the boys are rough-housing a little further down, still relatively in sight, but playing where the waves are strongest and because _the rocks are much cooler over there, okay, just look at all this sea glass!_

Which leaves Elsa with Anna and the others, which is fine, until Anna and Kristoff find yet another reason to wander off. (And she still doesn’t realize it, even then, because she is so distracted by Anna’s utter lack of subtlety in what she thinks is a rather obvious attempt to get Kristoff alone. And it still is, of course, but Elsa does not recognize the double-damning approach until long after Kristoff stumbles after her, armed with a reasonable excuse, but with half-stuttered conviction and the faintest trace of a blush.) They disappear into one of the woodsy paths, and do not return for some time.

Which leaves Elsa with Rapunzel and Eugene and Jack. It consists mostly of pleasant conversation between Rapunzel and Jack, and pleasant silence on the other ends; Eugene and Elsa share a look every once and a while, something kindred and fond and exasperated… especially because Rapunzel has accidentally started a conversation about sea glass and the Legend of Mermaid Tears.

(Rapunzel is rather shocked by the amusement with which Jack learns of this origin tale, though she is clearly trying her hardest not to show her disappointment.)

“How else should we have expected our ancestors to make sense of something so beautiful and unique?” Rapunzel is trying to defend, as if it were her personal responsibility to account for each and every unsung, well-meaning poet in swash-buckling history. “I think it’s a lovely story. A mermaid banished by Neptune for changing the tides to save the sailor she loved, and her crystalline tears forever wash ashore—it’s tragic, but there is beauty in it! Sacrifice and strength—”

“Mermaid probably shouldn’t have been with the sailor, anyway,” chimes Eugene, and Elsa gives him a curious look.

“Oh, hush,” Rapunzel swats at him. Eugene merely takes a sip from his beer, and gives Elsa a sly grin. Elsa stares dryly back. “Well, of course it was doomed from the start, and—okay, yeah, so it’s not a masterpiece, but it is an interesting bit of history, isn’t it? I mean, so _what_ if our scientific advancements were technically able to account for the sea glass anyway? It’s interesting! Especially given our continued need to turn so many of our stories into romantic tragedies about forbidden, impossible love.”

“The English Major has spoken,” Eugene raises his glass in salute, and Rapunzel rolls her eyes to Elsa, obviously expecting her to do the same.

“What are you thinking about?” Rapunzel asks, when she sees that Elsa has not.

Elsa tilts her head to the side, pondering what, or how much, to share. Is a beach bonfire the most appropriate or inappropriate place for deep conversation? In the present company, she supposes it would do to try.

“I wonder about the storytellers’ assumption of tears,” she begins, turning it over in her mind. “Most mermaid tales rather focus on the _danger_ of beautiful, alluring women... whereas this one touts her as a love-lorn savior. At first glance, the story seems to have been a way for sailors to spread evidence of their own appeal—”

“Oh, jeez.”

“But,” Elsa ignores Eugene’s hefty, purposeful sip, “on second thought, it could have been just as easy to spin the story another way and still maintain its purpose, couldn’t it? There was no need for further suffering on the mermaid’s part—the pair was never going to be together forever. The shards of sea glass could have been the physical after-effects of magic that might have brought them together."

"Together physically? Okay, Eugene, I _meant_ proximity-wise, don't go making this into an innuendo!"

"Perhaps," Elsa continues, unfazed. "I suppose such a twist wouldn’t have purported the sailor as the same be-all, end-all, unattainable pinnacle of romantic desire, _but_ it would have at least given the storytells the sacrifice-inducing allure they wished. _Or_ , on a similar note,the sea glass could be traces of struggle as she fought her way to the surface to rejoin him—scales that have fallen free in battle. Though I suppose that such a tale would have been too generous for even the most decent of the sailors of the time.”

“Half-creature tails don’t always have scales,” says Jack, out of nowhere.

Elsa blinks in surprise, as does Rapunzel and Eugene. An entire diatribe, and _that_ is the detail on which he fixates? She is almost too surprised respond.

And then she takes a closer look at the curious mixture of confusion and conviction on his face ( _the_ _innocence_?) and Elsa settles herself down. She is still pretty perplexed herself, so she gives him the benefit of the doubt—something must have been lost in translation, yet again. And since her guard had been up in the spirit of debate (but not quite _that_ far up), Elsa merely shrugs, and tries to pull herself back together; ignores the way her skin has a strange itch to it.

“I wouldn’t really know,” she answers, marveling at her own patience. “I love many stories, but mermaid-lore was never really a huge point of interest to me.” Elsa tries to show him a small, indulgent smile— _Hate the ocean, remember?_ —but Jack only stares back, frowning. Elsa’s discomfort comes creeping back. “That wasn’t really the point of my conclusions, though,” she clarifies. “I’m not so much interested in the creatures themselves as I am in the stories people tell about them.”

Jack frowns even deeper, looking miserably confused. “But they’re not even the right ones.”

 _What the hell?_ Elsa wants to ask, ire rising, but Rapunzel quickly answers instead with, “Well, in my experience, oftentimes stories—especially ones about nature—can teach us more about the storytellers than anything else. You can learn a lot about _human_ nature based on how a story is told.”

“Or heard,” Eugene adds, and for once, Elsa has to agree with him. She nods in quiet acknowledgement.

“What does the story say of—the sailor?” asks Jack. Elsa turns back to him, not quite sure what to make of his question; his eyes are especially serious, so much so that it’s hard to believe just how much genuine amusement he’d found at the legendary origins of sea glass not more than five minutes earlier—before Elsa had opened her mouth and barged in with theories. “Did the human—mourn her?”

Rapunzel frowns, thoughtfully. “You know… I don’t think it said.” She looks rather surprised by this line of questioning. “Wow. It’s funny, but I always just— _assumed_ that her love was reciprocated.”

Elsa huffs a sigh of disbelief, sharp and—almost—strangely satisfied. _What a world._

“So she sacrificed her freedom for his life, and the whole time he could have been entertaining barmaids in Tortuga,” Elsa concludes, feeling rather tired of discussing eighteenth century patriarchy. Eugene is laughing good-naturedly at their shared cynicism, and Rapunzel is gaping at them with unbidden exasperation. This conversation has obviously spiraled out of Rapunzel’s control, but Elsa isn’t finished, apparently. “Does the story even say that he knew who she was? What if he’d never even known that a mermaid was with him the whole time? While she was swimming alongside his ships, watching over him?”

“Her act was still a noble one,” Rapunzel insists, and Elsa smiles at the surge of feistiness she manages to lace into such a mild sip of a drink. “It was selfless, which is worthy of respect, even if  _some_ people might find it stupid.”

Elsa shrugs again, acknowledging her point. She still disagrees slightly ( _Elsa knows a thing or two about self-sacrifice_ ), but the last thing she wants to do is continue to rain on everyone’s fire. They are supposed to be having a _fun_ time—not arguing over centuries-old, misogynistic sailors' tales.

Eugene and Elsa share one final smile, and he subtly raises his glass in another indulgent salute, which is broken as soon as Rapunzel catches sight of it and lets out a fearsome groan, at which point they all succumb to very genuine laughter, and the spell breaks, and the thick ocean air is light again.

But Jack looks very thoughtful, after that.

 

//

 

“I think I left something in the car,” Rapunzel announces suddenly. Elsa’s eyes narrow.

She’d settled further into her chair, far more than she’d usually allow in public, and especially never at the studio at work. It had lulled her into a false sense of comfort and quiet. Now, Elsa tries not to stiffen too noticeably in response.

“Do you need it now?” Eugene asks, with a genuine mix of concern and confusion. Rapunzel’s thoughts are oftentimes spontaneous and scattered, but she isn’t often absent-minded. Her memory is spotty, but she isn’t _forgetful_.

“I’d like to have it,” she states simply, and Elsa watches the unspoken question looming in Rapunzel’s eyes with growing unease.

“I’ll walk with you,” he answers, already shifting his feet in the sand. The beer bottle is coming with him, obviously, and when he stands and stretches it dangles easily in his fingertips. Elsa’s heart begins to pound against her ribs.

“We can join you,” Elsa offers immediately, panicking only slightly. (Marginally. A lot.) When Jack’s head swivels in her direction, she doesn’t spare him a glance. “I have the keys.”

“No worries,” says Rapunzel cheerfully, digging through Elsa’s purse, which is directly next to her left foot. The nerve. “No point in all of us walking all the way there and back.”

Elsa’s throat begs for an excuse, but her words have broken and died at the sight of Eugene’s playful smirk.

“The others will be back soon,” he reasons, with a gleam in his eye, and to Elsa it sounds like a friendly warning. “All of their stuff is still here.”

She knows she could complain, if she wanted to. Rapunzel wouldn’t have any qualms about asking Eugene to watch over their stuff instead, while Elsa accompanied her—if Elsa said so.

Her mouth stays traitorously shut.

“We’ll be back in a bit,” Rapunzel waves as they walk, and in her cheerfulness, Elsa hears the telltale traces of matchmaking deviousness.

Elsa is left alone with Jack by the fire.

 

//

 

They don’t talk, really, at all.

Which is a mild relief, and also insanely disappointing all at once.

Elsa keeps feeling like she should say _something_ , especially since they had been so clearly capable of genuine conversation just that afternoon in her rented condo. What difference does it make that they are by a bonfire, on the beach, listening to the nighttime tides?

Apparently, a great deal.

Elsa is exceedingly awkward on even the best of her good days, so tonight is almost painfully uncertain. It doesn’t help that Elsa is almost impossibly aware of his faded jeans (a touch too tight), his white-blond hair (a touch too long), and his faded blue hoodie (a touch too small). The fabric rides up, occasionally, on the small of his back, and Elsa notices that his face is just as pale as the rest of him. She notices herself staring resolutely into the flames.

The flush in her cheeks is clearly from the heat of the fire.

But in their silence, Elsa has ample time to observe him from the corner of her eye. He is rather intent on burying his feet in the sand, almost to the point where Elsa wonders at her own sandals, flat atop the surface. She likes different sensations, even if she is sometimes more sensitive to them than others, but sand has never been a favorite of hers; it shifts too much, ever-changing, never constant. It always ends up _everywhere_. But Jack seems perfectly at ease with his toes in the sand, and yes, she is familiar with the common expressions about relaxation and beaches and the sea, but Jack actually seems to _believe_ them. He seems rather determined to savor it all.

“Do you and Jamie spend a lot of time here at the beach?” Elsa asks, before she can think twice about it.

Jack looks to her with wide eyes, but his shock quickly melts into pleasant surprise. His grin really _is_ charming, once you get to know the motivations behind it. Elsa shiftily turns her eyes back to the fire, looking abruptly away, but Jack doesn’t seem to mind.

“Not really,” he answers, and it sounds like he is holding back a laugh. “We spend most of our time—in the water. But I like the land.”

“The sand?”

Jack digs his feet further down, as if to emphasize his point. “ _Yes_ ,” he grins.

Elsa is suddenly overcome with a wave of feeling—something alarming and wildly inconvenient. It is almost _fond_ , but. Not quite.

“How did you meet him?” Elsa asks curiously, if only to get herself to stop staring at him as he plays with the sand at his feet. ( _A touch too big_ , whispers a voice, but Elsa squashes it immediately, _fiercely_. This boy understands practically nothing of social convention, so now is _not_ the time, nor is he the _person_ , for which Elsa should be imagining—)

Jack fidgets playfully with the drawstrings at his chest, and wades his feet through the mounds of sand he’d shaped at the edge of his chair.

“Jamie is a naturally—curious kind of person,” Jack continues to grin, staring at his feet. There is no mistaking the fondness in his tone, or the good humor that works alongside it. “He wants to learn—just as much as I do.”

Elsa isn’t really sure what she can say to that. “Did you meet through school?” she questions, hoping both to get a better sense of how they’d come to know one another, and how old Jack really is. She could have just asked, she supposes, but he’d already avoided her question once and she doesn’t want to be rude.

( _He may not genuinely know the difference,_ whispers a tiny, uninhibited voice. Elsa ignores it, again. _You could probably say whatever you want._

 _Or do._ )

“No,” Jack answers without hesitation. “Jamie doesn’t have school until—later. I remember. I met him the way anyone—usually does, in this town.” Elsa looks at him, brimming with burning curiosity, as he offers her yet another toothy grin. ( _He has them in spades._ ) His eyes gleam with the firelight, almost red-orange with the flames; her breath catches in her throat.

She swallows it down and hastily summons up the rest of her iciest, most useful reserves of sarcasm. A single brow arches, defenses careening high, and Elsa levels him with an almost-glare.

“At a bar?” she suggests, but dismisses it immediately. ( _Water_ , she remembers, and feels the strangest sense of suspicion come from nowhere.)

“No,” Jack laughs, happy and light. (This is her favorite laugh, Elsa decides—the one that uses his entire chest, all of his face. His eyes scrunch slightly with it, though he doesn’t seem to notice.) “By _accident_.”

(It is also the laugh that makes her feel the most uncomfortable.)

 

//

 

“Why don’t you like the ocean?” he asks later, when Elsa has begun to wonder _really,_ for how long could people stay in the woods making out? Haven’t they rented condos for this kind of thing?

“Too unpredictable,” Elsa answers tightly, telling herself not to worry about things like small animals and unbeaten paths and poison ivy. “We know so little about so much of it.”

Jack nods thoughtfully, but with slanted brows—he looks like he is having even more of a difficult time deciding which words to use than usual.

“Can’t that—be said about most fascinating things?” he wonders aloud. “Like, how do you call it—space?”

Elsa muses on that privately for a moment. “Actually, we think we know more about what goes on in outer- _space_ than we do about what actually goes on in the ocean.”

“That does not surprise me,” he smiles, like it is a joke. Elsa, as usual, _hears_ his strange meanings and tones, but does not understand them. His expression shifts, quick and subtle, with a sudden seriousness that Elsa likewise can’t account for. “But,” he insists, sounding troubled, “this lack of understanding, or experience—that is no reason for—fear?”

Elsa frowns. “Many people think so.”

Jack frowns back, perhaps even more deeply. “I offended you again.”

 _Yes_ , she thinks, but this isn’t entirely fair. Of course Jack doesn’t _know_. He couldn’t.

With a heaving sigh, Elsa turns back to the fire. This bonfire is about to get far more personal than she’d have liked, but for some reason—she couldn’t really bring herself to consider another option. (Perhaps she actually  _wants_ to share this with Jack?) She still doesn’t understand much of anything that she’s done that day; what is one more weird act of uncharacteristic openness to add to the pile?

“My parents died at sea,” she offers, bluntly, the same way one might correct the cashier at a register about their miscounted change. Actually, no—Elsa would be much more polite about something like that. She takes another moment or two to ponder it, then realizes that Jack is staring at her quite openly, alarmed.

“I’m sorry,” says Jack, stunned.

Elsa resolutely does not look into his widened eyes. The fire is safer.

“They loved the ocean,” she finds herself admitting, much to her quiet dismay. She can’t seem to stop. “It was a tradition for them to spend their special anniversaries at sea.” _Why_ is she sharing this?

“Your father… was a sailor?” he asks, almost inaudible under the crackle of flames. Elsa frowns—not at his having asked a personal question, but rather at the one he’s chosen. Not everyone in this day and age would simply assume that all sea-lovers are _sailors_.

“He considered himself one,” she allows, and then lets herself fall silent.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, floored, and Elsa shakes her head. Already, she is tired of it.

“They knew the risks,” Elsa recites, momentarily astounded by the bite she hears in her own voice. _There are always risks_ , she scowls, and swallows, taking a deep breath. “My mother had her own skill, and my father was a capable captain. They’d weathered many storms before that one.”

She risks a glance toward his face ( _There are always—_ ), but his eyes are wide with sympathy, and really, this is _not_ the way to conduct oneself at a summertime bonfire.

“It’s all right,” Elsa insists rather stiffly, hoping that just for once he’ll take her point. “It just means that I don’t much like setting foot in the water anymore. The beach never held the same appeal for me that it did for them. I learned basic skills on a boat when I was very young, because of their passion and because I spent so much time on the sea with them—not to mention I was a bit of an avid learner, no matter how much I might have disliked the subject—so nowadays I only come to humor Anna, who has always shared that love with them—”

“It’s why you don’t like for her to be out in the water,” Jack blurts suddenly, shooting a chill down Elsa’s spine. His eyes grow wide with realization, earnest concern—and apology.

Elsa flushes, though with _what_ , she isn’t certain.

“I’d like to be done talking about this,” she manages levelly, “If you don’t mind.”

“Yes,” he replies immediately. There seems to be too many conflicting emotions flickering across his face for her to truly read any of them, to gauge just how he’d interpreted her touch-and-go sense of interpersonal confidence. Ugh. “I really am sorry,” he repeats, simply because he can’t seem to help himself.

“It’s fine,” Elsa sighs, ready to rid themselves of this whole conversation. She settles more deeply into the seat, and lets the base of her skull rest back against the back of her chair. The sky is beautiful tonight, all stars and passing clouds. The moon is almost full, too. Not that Elsa ever puts much stock in things like that. “I suppose this sheds new light on my interpretation of the mermaid’s tale, doesn’t it?”  
  
She feels Jack jerk in his chair beside her; he seems just as surprised as she is by her sudden observation. He hesitates. “What do you mean?”

“Just that my father was a good man, and a sailor,” Elsa muses, staring at broken constellations. “He sailed a mostly modest yacht, not a grand ship, and he loved the ocean almost as much as he loved my mother. He was in the navy and, in all of the years he spent at sea, I never understood how much danger he was truly in. I think he knew, and I think that's important.”

Jack waits in silence. He is either speechless by matter of courtesy, or means of translation, or perhaps because he already knows where she is going.

“We don’t know much about the sailor from the story,” Elsa breathes in and out, sighing towards the sky. “Whether he was a decent sort of man, or not, although I hope he was, given the mermaid’s devotion to him. I’m much older now, and I don’t put much faith in fairy tales, no matter how fascinating I find them. But,” Elsa acknowledges, “perhaps it might have been… nice, I suppose, to have been a little girl, and have learned that something out there cared enough about my family to change the tides.”

When she glances over to him, Jack is staring into the fire, forlorn. He looks very much like he doesn’t really know what to say to such a confession.

Elsa doesn’t blame him. 

 

//

 

When Anna and Kristoff return sometime shortly after, it is to a rather somber mood. Anna is disappointed, though she hides it rather well. Mostly. 

Rapunzel and Eugene return shortly thereafter, and the energy gradually returns. The laughter is light and the stars are brighter, and Hiccup and Astrid soon bring back plenty of wood for the fire. The final few bring heaps of sea glass to show off, and don’t understand why Eugene breaks into riotous laughter.

Jack sends Elsa a worried glance, but she brushes it off with a well-hidden wave. And— _who knows?_ Maybe it is a testament to her growing trust in him—or the inherent freedom within the salty, sea-thick air—or the fact that she is young and alive and surrounded by friends on a beach on a beautiful night ( _or that she is sitting next to a rather beautiful boy_ , if she’d let herself think as much), but when he turns to her with a concerned and wary gaze at the first sight of opaque, frosted sea glass, she merely smiles back—soft, and small, and secret. 

He smiles back at her, hidden and sly, and Elsa is rather overwhelmed by the newness of this shared, special sort of understanding—and equally struck by the very real desire to know where he is planning to spend the night.

 

* * *

 

 


	6. not the ocean's fault

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _9/8/16_. WOW, YES, I AM STILL ALIVE. YES, IT HAS, IN FACT, BEEN OVER A YEAR SINCE THE LAST UPDATE, I KNOW I KNOW. For a bit of fun background context...
> 
> In the past few months, I have: completed grad school, finished my fifth year at my previous job, conducted multiple job searches for various time periods (including moving abroad and teaching English in Japan for year), accepted a job offer in Japan for January of 2017 and onward, accepted two separate job offers for the fall of 2016, worked a completely different full-time summer position, visited family and friends in various cities/states/countries with over eight flights in a matter of three weeks, interviewed for more jobs, accepted more jobs, started brand new jobs, and served as the maid of honor in a destination wedding. It's been a busy half a year! ♡
> 
> ALSO, and perhaps more significantly, about six months ago my "K" and "L" keys stopped working on my laptop. ~~do you have any idea how difficult it is to write fanfiction about “jack” and “elsa” with a keyboard that does not allow you to type “k” or “l” do you have any idea do you have any~~ THIS NEW CHAPTER TODAY IS specifically in impromptu celebration of my BRAND NEW LAPTOP, which I picked up two nights ago!!
> 
> Updates will be sporadic and spontaneous and a surprise henceforth. We are almost done. Thank you for sticking with me. ♡♡♡
> 
> (Unbeta'd for now because I'm an impatient motherfucker and I WANT TO CELEBRATE THIS BRIGHT NEW ERA, but I will fix all mistakes sure enough in the future, lol, bear with me.)
> 
> //
> 
> P.S. I HAVE MISSED MY BRIGHT SUNNY PREDICTABLE SUMMERTIME FIC. ♡

 

 

//

 

The others find their way back to the fire pit in waves: first Hiccup and Astrid, then Ruff and the boys… along with a veritable parade of friendly-looking strangers, bearing coolers and beach chairs and loud voices.

Elsa can hardly think for the swarm of people that are around them now. Instead of a quiet, peaceful evening by the bonfire, their rag-tag troop has found a small army of happy, newfound acquaintances; their small party of friends has actually become—well. A party.

She’s wrapped in the sounds of a guitar and the heat of a hungry fire, the flames of which almost roar against the roll of the waves. The night is balmy but the ocean breeze keeps the air fresh, and laughter floods from every side. Rapunzel and Anna have already befriended them all, especially the one called Merida, and the easy camaraderie of the beach makes Elsa feel as warm and light as it makes the night feel heavy. It’s still remarkably easy to feel herself floating at the edges, even as she’s being drawn inside.

Introductions flow for quite some time. The passing of names merge with the sounds of aluminum tabs cracking open new cans, with the ubiquitous whisper of the surf, with the crackle of flames, with the clinking of half-empty glass bottles. It’s crisp and languid and hopeful when someone gives Kristoff the guitar—which, all things considered, would not truly have become a problem in and of itself—but someone has specifically challenged Eugene “I Don’t Sing” Fitzherbert to a rendition of the latest summer pop hit, and Eugene never backs down from a challenge if he can win it. (Or con it, but that’s another story.)

So she’s laughing along with the others, watching the scene unfold before her with a level of openness nearly-once-forgotten, when a solemnity that she might have expected much earlier in the evening finally rears its head. It’s a quiet, lingering kind of feeling, and the more she tries to ignore it—the more she lets it in, lets it flow through her, lets it go—the more the feeling wants to stay.

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re going to miss this!” Rapunzel grabs onto her arm as she rises from the beach chair. Rapunzel’s other hand is recording the entertainment with that camera-app that she’s always sending pictures with. Eugene is truly making a scene.

“I won’t be long,” Elsa assures her, and sends a knowing glance back to the riotous laughter behind her. Eugene always _has_ had a rather unique falsetto. “Just a quick walk.”

Rapunzel is more acquiescing than Anna might have been, so Elsa is able to slip away from the fire without anyone noticing. Or mostly anyone.

“Walking?” Jack falls into step beside her, a bit out of breath from having to catch up.

Elsa takes a moment: does she mind that he’s followed her? _It’s certainly becoming par for the course_.

She shrugs. It’s a bit colder here than it was at the pit, but she welcomes it. “I like to walk the beach at night.” Oh, what the hell. “I don’t mind having company.”

He doesn’t answer with words, but Jack’s eyes go bright, especially away from the firelight. It’s like his blue eyes are better meant for the ocean and the night sky than a raging fire, all cool light and indigo navy blues. His hair and skin are well-suited for the nighttime clouds, she decides. Not that firelight is unkind to him: from a purely objective standpoint, Jack could be considered conventionally attractive under any type of light—sunlight or firelight or flashing lights alike. But this is different… it’s like he’s more comfortable here, like his whole face drinks in the moonlight, all gentle and soft and open. All of a sudden, Elsa feels rather old again.

The fire is a ways behind them now, glowing bright in the length of easy darkness, and there are many more fires in the distance—all dotted out along the stretch of sand, perhaps another mile or so, each one their own little world of celebration. Eventually the laughter behind them drifts out of reach, fading with each step. Jack is carrying with him a little bottle of root beer, and she laughs lightly under her breath at the sight.

“You—still do not like crowds.”

Elsa glances up at him. She’d been enjoying their rather companionable silence, but she supposes it wouldn’t hurt to humor some conversation. It’s easier to see him than it was before, now that their eyes have fully adjusted to the near darkness; it’s the moon that’s guiding them now. “No,” she relents, once more. “Still don’t.”

“Yet, your friends—they create them?”

Elsa laughs, in spite of herself. “Yes,” she agrees. “They have that effect.”

“You don’t mind them?” she asks after a few minutes, mostly to make an attempt at conversation herself. “Crowds?”

“I like people.”

Yes, she has gathered as much. It’s one of the few things that she _does_ know about him.

“Which college or university do you attend?” Elsa asks suddenly. If she’s trying to catch him off-guard, she doesn’t think it’s entirely on purpose. She just wants to know. “Are you with a certain school?”

“I travel with many schools.”

“Did you travel here by plane?”

“No, by sea.”

"When do you return home?"

"Whenever they tell me to."

"When might that be?"

"When I learn—what I am supposed to learn."

“And what is that?”

“Lots of things.”

Though Jack is seemingly growing more comfortable with English, there still seems to be little that makes sense. 

“All right,” she says, changing tactics. “What have you learned so far?”

Jack smiles at her, curious and amused, with Elsa ever as the punchline to a joke she doesn’t understand. It’s still just as unsettling and annoying as ever, but at least now Elsa can roll her eyes about it. 

“You ask many questions.”

_You don’t give many answers_. Nevertheless, Elsa takes this as her cue to put her curiosity to rest. For now. She nods, and goes quiet.

“I like questions,” Jack quickly reassures a few steps later, as if he hadn’t expected that his observation would cause her voice to stop. She perpetually gets the impression that he understands as little about her as she understands about him. 

“That’s all right. I will give you a break,” Elsa dismisses. Before he can protest, she suddenly admits, “I want you to know that I haven't had a chance to tell Anna about the necklace… Well, I suppose I could tell her anytime. I just haven't really wrapped my own thoughts around its return yet." She looks at him from the corner of her eye. "I'd already resigned myself to never seeing it again."

Jack takes a thoughtful sip of his root beer. ”You are—too comfortable—with goodbyes. You say them even when you don't—need to."

Elsa looks up. He's staring so curiously. What she wouldn't give to get inside his head.

"Everyone says 'goodbye' sometime," Elsa deflects. "It's part of life.”

“Not all life?”

She concedes. “Of being human, then.”

Jack grins crookedly.

"You have funny thoughts," he tells her, and he looks almost sad, "about what it means to be human."

"Well, what else would you propose?” She’s only partially defensive, and part of it is because she’s somehow asking him questions yet again; but the fact is also that it _is_ an intriguing question, and fascinating to explore.

And she still wants to know what's going on inside that moonlit brain.

"Human is—it is so much. It is not knowing," Jack gestures, limited in his words but clearly trying. "It is thinking that you know, and knowing that you don't, and learning what you can. Do you see?"

"I can," she replies, because she thinks she maybe sort of does. She can feel herself wanting to argue, to debate—but holds off. She wants to hear what else he has to say.

"Being human—it is adventure," says Jack, his features animated by the night winds and cloudy skies. "It is different. There is so much."

“Is it very different, where you're from?" She's been wondering about the possibility of him being from some part of lesser-known Europe perhaps—a rural sea village where most keep to themselves, and somehow Jack found his way here? But maybe she's got it all wrong? Maybe he's from a bustling city and is underwhelmed by the Cape Cod quiet, maybe he's been raised by friendly proverbial wolves, maybe he's from outer space. It is a testament to Elsa's seeding frustration that she does not immediately discount any of these possibilities.

Jack laughs, eyes bright. She's beginning to recognize it as _mischief_.

"Some things—have not changed,” he smiles. "Guardians still tell you what to do, where to go, who not to talk to when you walk into them." 

"Run into them?" Elsa gently corrects.

"Yes, or swims."

"Yes, sure, why not."

"There are also rules," Jack continues, warming to this subject. "Some are easier to break—than others. I have broken—quite a few."

"Are you proud of this?"

"Most of them."

Well, then. 

"Which ones are you most proud of?" she asks. This is not the half of the question she truly wants to ask.

"I stay out later than they like me to," he lists, grinning pale ear to pale ear. "The most fun happens during the times when I am supposed to stay low, but I stay up instead, above ground. Sometimes they are annoyed—sometimes not. I am getting better at learning when is which."

Sounds like a teenager, all right. Her suspicions about an undergraduate college exchange student program intensify.

"They also told me who I should or should not—talk to,” he repeats.

"Well, that seems reasonable. There are dangerous people in the world."

"There is many kinds of danger,” he argues, with surprising conviction. “We can't be afraid of all of them."

True. "All right. So you're proud of talking to people? Making new acquaintances even when you've been warned against it?"

Jack's brows furrow. "Acquaintance... This word. You are the only one—who uses this word?"

“It’s actually a fairly common word.”

"But, your friends,” he insists, and his determination to speak clearly is only getting in the way instead. “They call us 'friends,' don't they?"

Elsa tightens her lips. She reads between the stilted, bright-eyed lines. 

”I’ve known them for quite some time," she explains. "I treasure my friendships very closely." _For a while, I did not think I had any._ "It takes time for me to consider someone in my life a close friend.”

"Time," Jack echoes, scrunching his brows. "What else?"

Oh, dear. ”Lots of things," Elsa says, and her shoulders shrug in a casual way, but everything suddenly feels so stiff. Honestly, this is no reason to feel flustered.

"Like what?"

"Like... patience. Common interests." _Evidence that you're going to stick around._ "Mutual respect. Generosity."

"But... do we not have those things?"

"We do," Elsa relents, and her smile turns apologetic. She can feel a twinkle of amusement in her gaze, and she hopes it eases the blow. “Save for time."

Jack's expression fades, which is a terrible sight to see, but Elsa holds her ground. She wants to make herself absolutely _clear_. She's not completely ignorant to what's been happening these last few days.

It won't do to lead him on.

"Jack, don't misunderstand," she offers gently. "I'd like to get to know you better, but I don't want to give you the wrong impression: my friends and I—Anna and I will only be here for a few more days." Four, to be precise. "It's been lovely to meet you, and we've had, you know—"

"Fun?"

"Yes, we have," Elsa agrees, and ignores the curl in her gut. "But you live in a different place, and you don't have even a cell phone, and—even if you did—I'm not sure this would be enough to continue ties." Honestly, this isn't as cold as she's making it out to be; why does she always leave this impression? "This week so far has been lovely," she tries, "but this is the kind of acquaintanceship that will be better served as a lovely memory. Do you see what I'm saying?"

"I hear it," Jack answers after a long moment. "And I don't... like it, but. It is not the first time I have heard it."

"Oh?"

Jack's smile is wry. His gaze appears a lot more seasoned than what his face would imply.

"It is part of the rules," he says, and says nothing more.

They walk in silence for a bit. On the one hand, Elsa is glad that they're communicating more clearly: this acquaintanceship has been weighing on her these last few days, for reasons more than one, and now it's as if they have cleared the air between them, finally. Everything is gradually coming out into the open.

The last thing Elsa should be feeling is dissatisfied.

 

//

 

She’s still dissatisfied a half hour later, but at this point she’s starting to recognize maybe part of the reason why.

“Thank you for listening earlier, when I shared what I did about parents, by the way,” she says. “I’m not usually in a place or in company where I feel the… urge to tell the story, I suppose.” Not even to ‘ _friends_ ’. Elsa frowns.

“I am—honored.” He sounds like he means it.

“Look, Jack,” she starts, and is momentarily distracted by the realization that she can’t remember the last time she addressed him by name. “Jack—what I said earlier, about us being friends… it’s not that I don’t want to be. I mean, I would like to be, and perhaps I suppose we could say that we actually are, in some ways, I just don’t want you to think that—“

“Listen,” he hisses, and halts.

Elsa stops short, watching Jack watch the sea. He’s always been very curious and conscious of what’s happening around him, but in this moment he is _alert_. He’s looking for something.

“The sea is restless.”

Elsa looks out over the waves, intrigued. She supposes that he is right, but she can’t much tell the difference.

“There will be a storm tonight. We should head back.”

Elsa is surprised. “Right now?”

“Yes.”

As Jack is a young man of very few words, Elsa can’t help but follow these.

 

//

 

When they return to the pit, there are even more people than before. This time, Elsa recognizes the new faces right away.

“Hey,” Jamie greets breathlessly, briefly losing his balance in the sand. It looks as if they’ve just come running from the other direction. Pippa is only a few paces behind him, and when she catches up, the force of their combined panting can practically be heard over the lively crackle-pop of the fire. “There you are! We were about to go looking for you.”

Elsa glances between them while Jack tilts his head. “I thought—you would call?”

“Yeah, man—you weren’t—you didn’t answer the phone.”

Elsa turns to Jack in surprise, but Rapunzel is the one to ask. “You got a phone?”

“Borrowing,” Jack answers absently. The way he’s taking in Jamie’s sudden arrival is curious, indeed. And then Jack turns and stares into the sea, stone-faced.

She looks between the three of them. “Is everything all right?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re just, ah—still learning the, ah, _ins-and-outs_ of cellphone usage, I guess,” Jamie laughs, and a nervous grin spreads over his face. He appears even younger than Jack, who is tossing his empty glass bottle of root beer into the collection box next to the fire pit. And then before Jamie can even finish the rest of his sentence, Jack is walking so quickly through the shape-shifting sand that he actually passes his local researcher friends and starts making his way toward the sandy path from which Jamie and Pippa presumably came.

“You leavin’?” Eugene calls out, surprised. Jack only turns his head half-back, and his expression is chagrined, sheepish. His eyes catch Elsa’s, and he winces.

“For now,” says Jack. Apology rings through his voice, but he doesn’t turn all the way back around. “I have to go, but I will see you tomorrow, I hope.” Elsa’s stomach does a flip.

“Everything okay?” Hiccup ventures, eyeing the breezy path behind the trio. Elsa can make out a car in the far off distance at the edge of the sand cliffs: headlights bright, engine running, driver-side car door wide-open—

“Dolphins,” Pippa nods abruptly, sharp and fierce, and her eyes are so lit with determination and conviction that in this moment no one can think to question her. “Dolphin _situation._ Big one.”

“Sorry, guys,” Jamie half-grimaces through a slippery shrug, already backpedaling to keep up with Jack’s surprisingly long strides and Pippa’s hopping jog through the deep stretch of sand. “It was—nice meeting you! Elsa—nice seeing you again!”

The others shoot her surprised looks, which she pretends to miss completely, and then they’re off. She watches along with the others as the three almost-strangers disappear behind the tall, shadowy grasses of the distant path. By the time the tiny headlights disappear from sight altogether, the rest of the party has shrugged off the locals’ sudden arrival and quick departure, offered a few passing hopes that _everything turns out okay,_ and resumed their evening of laughing and singing and chatting and mingling by the waves and the fire.

Elsa watches the path.

 

//

 

“What’s up with you and the kid?”

Elsa turns to Eugene, startled.

“What?”

“You and the kid. Something there?”

Elsa’s eyes narrow. Her voice is carefully neutral. “Is that what you think?” _Is that what you_ all _think?_

“Well, clearly I’m a little more interested in what _you_ think. I ain’t one to talk about age differences, but even he seems to be a bit… you know.”

“What?” Her voice is level, but her curiosity shines through like a demand, defensive and equally uncertain. It’d be so much easier to feel angry at Eugene’s vagueness if she didn’t feel like she was drowning in it, herself. “Young? Innocent? Naive?” _Endearing, inquisitive, mischievous, friendly. Lost._

Eugene tilts his head back and forth, beer poised at the ready. “Not… exactly.”

“If you have an opinion, then say it.”

“It’s just a feeling,” Flynn says quickly, suddenly dismissive. Frustration begets frustration.

“What kind of feeling?” Elsa presses, because she is not one to leave any stone unturned. Perhaps because she is so careful to bury secrets of her own. “Aren’t you one of the ones who told me to loosen up a bit? Weren’t you telling me that I should try to relax a bit more and welcome new possibilities and other such philosophies?”

After a long moment, Eugene says, “Yeah,” and takes a drink. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

 

//

 

There is a storm that night after all, peculiarly enough.

It forces the party to turn in sometime around 2AM, which suits Elsa just fine.

 

//

 

The next morning, the beach is rife with warnings of riptides. Elsa does not want to stray from the lifeguards, but Anna has a recommendation from one of the party-goers from the evening before about a secluded alcove along one of the unmarked beaches.

“Elsa! It’s a beautiful day! Look at the shore—it’ll be fine!”

“As long as you check the tides from higher ground before going in. I mean it, Anna,” Elsa cautions. “Stay in the clear.”

“Of course!” she winks. “And besides, you’re such a strong swimmer you’re practically a lifeguard yourself. You def scold us enough.”

“ _Anna_.”

But the day is bright and the sky is blue, and soon Elsa feels herself begin to relax. Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff enjoy almost an hour of uninterrupted peace before they are joined by the others, in small waves of energy and rowdiness, and Elsa’s umbrella station grows steadily more in wealth of bags, beach towels, and folding chairs. She is a magnificently pale Queen, sitting surrounded by beach coolers. Their whole party has arrived by noon, so it’s only a matter of time before their newest addition makes his latest appearance.

Yet the minutes pass, and by two in the afternoon, Elsa begins to wonder.

“I’m sure he’ll drop by,” Anna charges in unexpectedly, disrupting Elsa’s observation of the tides. It’s at peak, and the crashes of the waves are loud in her ears. “He was still at the bonfire when we talked about this place last night.”

“Who, Jack?” Elsa looks up. She catches Anna’s eye roll, but elects to ignore it. “He seemed rather busy last night when Jamie arrived. I don’t imagine he’ll have time to visit today.”

Anna gives Elsa a very intentional look. “Oh, I think he’ll find the time.” And then she kisses Elsa on the cheek, wholly taking her off-guard, and flits away before Elsa can utter a defense. She sighs, watching Anna take off into the surf. When she’s too far to witness, Elsa smiles.

It’s not long after that when Elsa decides that she might actually have the chance to _read_ today, instead of getting side-tracked by confusing young local boys and their unwavering attention. She picks up her book with undiminished delight, and sinks herself into her reading, where she contentedly stays for quite some time.

Until the shouting.

Elsa looks up at shore in front of her; Anna is nowhere in sight.

The book falls as Elsa’s bare feet hit the sand, her legs pumping long, uneven strides through the shifting sand and the large smooth stones of Cape Cod notoriety that catch her steps off-kilter. Kristoff is a quarter-mile down the beach from their spot, out in the shallows with riptides waist-high, and Elsa cannot see who he is shouting to another ten, fifteen, twenty yards offshore, but she _knows_.

“Anna!” Elsa calls, high and loud and _not again, not again, not again, not again_. “To the side!” she shouts, as does Kristoff and Hiccup and Snotlout and Tuff. Where is Eugene? Where is Rapunzel? “Anna, swim to the _side_!”

And oh, oh, oh she is _trying._ Flashes of red bob up and out of the water, twenty-five, thirty feet out from the coast. Elsa breaks into the shallows, tearing off the wrap of fabric tied to her waist and flinging it behind her onto the wet sand. Snotlout is trying to inch farther out into the waves, but keeps losing his footing. “Don’t go where you can’t stand!” Elsa shouts as she passes by him, reaching closer to where Kristoff’s feet are barely clinging to the bottom. _If I can just—_ but no, she’s too far now, it isn’t safe for Elsa either.

Elsa conserves her breath and bursts back onto the sandy shallows. She takes off in a sprint down the shoreline, in the direction of the high cliff-face that shields their view from the vast expanse of the open ocean, on and on and on until she believes hopes _feels_ that she is out of the rip’s reach, and then she dives.

There is no current here, but the waves are strong and restless from the night’s storm, and Elsa channels all of her focus into each stroke, each pull, each kick. Anna could be forty, fifty feet out by now. She could have fought her way out of the tide, _could have gone under_ , could still be expending her energy to fight to the surface. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, so she swims.

“Anna!” She calls out, wastes precious breath and momentum, but she has to. “Anna, answer me!”

For a few, brief, agonizing moments, Elsa regains her bearings—she treads water at the lull between the sloping waves, far past the worst of the foam and the breaks and the crashing surf. Kristoff and the others are mere dots along the sandbar. Kristoff is rapidly moving along the coast, following her, but until then Elsa is alone in the water, heart pounding and eyes burning, with crashing and drumming and water in her ears. “Anna!” she cries. “ _Anna!”_

It’s a flash of red that steals her attention. Anna has drifted much farther than Elsa has gone, both in distance from the shore and proximity to the rock face, near all of its arches and hidden caverns and the boulders that break the powerful tide. She can only see Anna faintly, bright and beautiful red against the wild blue, but Elsa can imagine the rest—the harsh coughs, the gasping breaths, the sloppy trough of shaky strokes through unrelenting waves. Elsa heaves a breath and resumes her precise movements through the water, practiced and perfected and too much muscle-memory to allow for _thinking_ or _feeling_ or discomfort, each stroke a song of _not again, not again, never again, never again, never never never never never—_

She’s nearing her now, much faster than Anna could hope to move after fighting so hard for so long, and Elsa knows in her heart that there is definitely, absolutely the chance to reach Anna before she drifts down into the underbelly of a lagoon, or gets pulled into the currents destined for the jagged rocks. Elsa’s arms burn, her legs burn, her lungs burn, her eyes her nose her throat, but Elsa does not care, Elsa is a stronger swimmer than this, she _is_.

And she makes it, so much faster and so much sharper than she’s ever needed or allowed herself to be, but by the time she reaches the point at which she was supposed to meet her sister, Anna is nowhere to be found.

 _No_ —her heart stutters. _No, no no no no no!_

She is not to be seen near the rocks farther down the pass, nor anywhere closer to the shore _nor_ farther out into the open sea, which means that she’s gone under, which means that she’s either escaping the waves or that she’s exhausted beyond measure or that she’s been dragged into one of the pools inside the caverns, which means that Elsa has _choices_ to make, which means she has to, cannot do this alone.

Elsa is halfway back to shore when Kristoff reaches her—he will take to the water and keep looking; Eugene and Rapunzel have returned and they have already headed towards the ledges above the rocks and will keep watch; and she, she will take to the shore and search the alcoves, see if Anna has washed into one of the pools inside the caverns.

Ruffnut is holding a cell phone in her hand as Elsa bursts forth from the water, and they call to her as she runs past them, but she waves them off with a high sweep of her hand, and keeps running. If her lungs are still burning, if there is salt on her face, it is because of the ocean, the ocean, the ocean, the _ocean_.

The first cavern is small and empty, and devoid of much light. The second is larger, and hurts her feet to climb through, but she does, but even after first glance it appears that the pool is unconnected to the tides by any direct path. The third cavern is long, with low ceilings, but the pool is deep and deceptively calm and opens wide into what can only lead to the open water, and resting against the lip of the pool is her sister, pale cheek resting against stone and seaweeds and salt, dazed and breathing and _how did she get here—?_

“Anna!” Elsa rushes to kneel. She does a cursory glance over the body that she can see and once certain nothing seems bent or broken, Elsa gently pulls her sister from the water to sit with her upon the narrow ledge. “Anna, are you hurt? How are your lungs? Did you hit your head? How long have you been inside here for?” Anna keeps breathing, slow and steady, with far more precision and control than Elsa can currently claim, and the contrast unsettles her. Who here has just nearly drowned? “Anna, _speak_ to me—are you all right?”

 _She must be in shock_ , Elsa breathes tightly, pushing the damp and salty strands of hair from Anna’s face. She’s so still, so pale, so lost in thought, or maybe no thought at all. She’s very nearly just _oh_ , Elsa can’t bear to think about it, not even now, possibly not ever. “We are never coming to the beach again.”

Anna’s eyes snap up to hers, animated and bright with surprise. Has she only just realized that her sister is here? Does she have any idea what has just happened to her? Elsa is going to hold her and never, ever let her out of her sight again.

“It’s not the ocean’s fault,” Anna says, bizarrely. She blinks wide eyes.

“Anna,” Elsa sighs, in frustration and relief and a sweep of gratitude so wide and so deep that it nearly consumes her. She pulls her sister close, wraps her arms around her shoulders tightly, gives space to her battered, beaten lungs. “You are the most ridiculous.”

“No, I’m not,” Anna whispers, eyes still wide and round and dazed. A small cough, wet and sharp and painful, rips its way out of Anna’s throat. Anna’s reddened eyes water from the sting, and Elsa kisses all around them. Elsa will take them back to shore in only a moment or two—the others need to know that she’s safe. _Kristoff_ should know that she’s safe. They should take Anna to the hospital, just to be sure, and put her in bedrest for the rest of the week, and definitely not into the water again, not ever— “I’m not the most ridiculous.”

“Fine. Of course you’re not,” Elsa smoothes Anna’s bangs. They should ease themselves up now, and leave this cavern, but Elsa is surprised to find just how badly she needs this moment of rest, too. Anna is silent. Her body is so still, so restful, and it’s so unlike her that Elsa’s concern heightens. She needs to go see a doctor. “We need to go tell the others you’re safe,” she declares, and shifts.

“Wait,” Anna breathes, and Elsa’s halts her tiny movements at beginning to ease them upwards. She watches Anna’s face intently; Anna is staring at the water. A tiny piece of Elsa’s heart _breaks_ … is Anna thinking the same thing? Is she thinking about their parents, too? She can’t begin to describe it.

“We can only be grateful that you found your way here,” Elsa utters, sighing deeply. In spite of all that they are _lucky_ , and all the reasons for why Anna has every right to behave so strangely, Elsa cannot help nor account for the nerves that rattle her. She fights through them, hides them, just like she does with everything else. “We just have to be grateful that you somehow made it here safely. You fought so hard, Anna. You were so strong—and you made it. I am so proud of you, and so grateful. No more jokes ever again about me being a lifeguard, do you understand me? You fought so hard to get here, Anna. You did it, you did it, you did it, I love you.”

“Yes,” Anna whispers, staring intently into the water.“I love you, too.”

 

//


	7. in a place like this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _10/2/16_. LOOK A WILD UPDATE APPEARED. Over 14,000 words. This chapter was a victory, let me tell you. (Shout out to **SOCKS** for reading this over beforehand and giving it some quick beta love!)
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com/)♡

 

 

 

//

 

Anna has been staring into her tea cup for almost half an hour now.

“More?” Elsa holds the kettle over the mug, studying her sister’s face.

“Please.”

Anna watches the water trickle into her mug with such intent. She watches the steam curl and the mug sit on its plate, and all the while Elsa tries to remember why they all talked her out of taking Anna to the hospital.

“Hey,” arrives Kristoff, slightly out of breath and carrying yet another warm blanket fresh from the dryer in the basement. “Snot just called from the store and said he picked up some extra marinade. Looks like we’re having a spontaneous barbecue dinner night.”

“If the _amount_ of marinade is any indication,” Eugene chimes in, emerging through the door behind Kristoff, who is now fluffing out the new blanket. “Then we are probably having barbecue for breakfast, also.”

Anna smiles a bit, and for that, Elsa is grateful.

“You guys are making a mountain out of me,” she grins, but Kristoff tentatively wraps another blanket over her shoulders anyway. Maybe they should turn down the air conditioning? Or turn it off altogether? But then again, Anna’s cheeks are looking rather pink.

 _Ah_. Perhaps that’s not the heat from the blankets…

Anna notices Elsa staring. “I’m fine, guys,” she laughs at them. “Just tired.”

“I’ll say,” Eugene cocks a brow. “Olympic swimmers ain’t got nothing on you.”

Elsa’s stomach plummets, but Anna rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Ha, ha.”

For lack of anything better to do, and feeling her hands start to itch from idleness, Elsa pours herself another cup of tea and sits at the table as well. Eugene and Kristoff begin to discuss the finer nuances between _grilling_ and _barbecuing_. She wonders how much of it is for Anna’s benefit. When the conversation turns heated, Elsa is forced to admit that they genuinely find this to be a Very Serious Debate.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Elsa says quietly, under the hum of a barbecue debate-battle taking place on the other side of the kitchen. Anna’s eyes seem more focused now, like she can actually see her sister here in the kitchen, as if they’ve finally left the alcove where Elsa found her.

“Me too,” she whispers back. Anna lets out a tiny smile, and Elsa finds her sister’s hand.

“We could sneak away for a sisters’ night, if you’d prefer,” she offers. “If this is too much.”

Anna snorts. “They’re always a bit much,” she says fondly. “And that sounds lovely,” she squeezes Elsa’s hand, “but I think I’d like to be surrounded by people tonight.”

Elsa can’t hold back the little grin that sneaks onto her face; it might be a testament to how far she’s come that she doesn’t try. “We can do that.”

In the background, Kristoff and Eugene argue about kebabs.

//

 

“I think I might stop by the Dolphin Research Center and see if Jack and Jamie and Pippa would like to join us tonight,” announces Elsa, quite suddenly.

Anna glances to Elsa so quickly she nearly spills what little tea she has left. “You?”

“Yes, me. It’s not so preposterous that I might wish to include others, is it? You did say you wanted to be _surrounded_ , did you not?”

Anna eyes her curiously. Elsa pretends she has no idea why Anna is so surprised.

“Yeah,” she says slowly, eyes alight. “You should invite them.”

 

//

 

For a brief period of time, Elsa actually contemplates driving over to the research facility to invite them personally, but that’s silly. What if they’re not even there? Elsa ends up calling the front desk from her cell phone in her room at the condo, and when the line picks up, it’s Pippa.

As is becoming typical, Pippa and Elsa’s combined awkwardness leads to a lot of unnecessary niceties and trailing silence. But in the end, the invitation is given, Pippa promises to relay the information, and Elsa is left without any clear answer, but a tiny sliver of optimism that they are probably at least likely to make an appearance. _Especially since Jack never made it to the beach today_. She wonders what he’s been up to. Elsa laughs.

Probably eating Hot Pockets.

 

//

 

“Is there _anything_ in this world we can accomplish without being rowdy?” Rapunzel laments, but she doesn’t sound all that torn up about it.

“No,” says Astrid, decisively, with a feral grin. She stabs something on the picnic table with a knife, delighted.

Ruffnut and Rapunzel and Anna have strung up lights in a space in the big open backyard, and it complements the sunset beautifully. There’s no fire, but the grille is sizzling tirelessly, and the music is probably already too loud for the neighbors even though it’s only barely dusk. Elsa sits at the edge of one of the picnic table benches, within reach of the fresh fruit salad. Merida is discussing hobbies with Astrid, which both coincidentally revolve around sharp and pointy objects, and Hiccup is sketching something down in a large notebook near the fire, no doubt in an attempt to record it before the thought flies from his head. Eugene and Kristoff are both manning the grille, for which Fishlegs has found the user manual and is… doing some light reading, apparently. Elsa’s sandals have been left abandoned beneath the table, hidden in the grass. The breeze sweeps through and tousles her bread, but Elsa welcomes it.

“Drat!” hisses Anna. “All out of tape! Be right back!”

Elsa looks up in amusement as Anna marches toward the back door, purportedly to raid the Berkians’ condo for supplies rather than climb all the way to the second floor to retrieve theirs. She is a woman on a mission in Kristoff’s hoodie and her noisy flip-flops, with fast-pumping arms and a single-minded stare towards the glass sliding door. Elsa laughs openly as Anna passes right by her and disappears inside, but for the millionth time this evening, Elsa’s heart squeezes with the knowledge that this reality had been very, very close to never occurring at all.

She must have been staring at the glass door for a bit too long, evidently, because Eugene plops down onto the picnic bench seat next to her, and _looks_. His chin is in his hand, a sympathetic smirk on his lips, and understanding in his eyes. Rather than acknowledge his uncanny sense of perception, Elsa mindfully plucks a grape from the bowl and examines it. When Eugene makes a show of inching his way closer, she half-heartedly tosses it in his face; it’s almost a shame that he catches it in his mouth.

“I’m fine,” is what she says.

Eugene doesn’t move, any more or any less. “That’s what she says, too.”

“You don’t believe us?”

“I believe one of you,” he chirps, and opens his mouth. Elsa rolls her eyes, plucks another grape, and tosses it in. He looks far too pleased with this talent of his. As Elsa glares mildly from the corner of her eye, Eugene takes a small bunch from the bowl and makes a movement as if to ask _your turn?_ Elsa dubiously shakes her head. Eugene shrugs, unperturbed, and tosses the grape high into the air, before catching it in his own mouth.

“Showoff,” Elsa scolds; the fact that she can’t stop herself from grinning may or may not impede the effect. She alternates between watching the others, watching the door, and watching Eugene. _Should it really take this long to look for some tape?_ After the seventh “accidental” toss towards her face, however, Elsa gives up. Or in, rather.

“There you go!” Eugene laughs while Elsa chews. “Put that go-getter attitude to good use.”

Elsa nearly huffs, and a smirk slides into place. _Is owning my own architect practice not ‘good use’ enough?_

“Is that what bolsters your talent here?” she taunts instead, all while trying not to talk with her mouth full; it makes for a difficult balance. “ _Your_ go-getting motivation?”

“For grapes?” Eugene asks, and punctuates it with another graceful catch. “Always.”

“I don’t know what this has to do with anything. I’m still fine, you know.” _Catch_. “And if Anna really is too, then—all the best. And if she’s hiding it, or trying not to interrupt our vacation, or trying to keep it from us, then…"

“Huh,” muses Eugene, chewing loudly on a grape. “I wonder why anybody might ever try to hide their feelings for the sake of oth— _Ow_ ,” he flinches, and lets the fired grape bounce off his forehead and into his lap with no attempts to catch it all. “That was a misuse of your grape-throwing powers.”

“Then catch it, next time.”

“Maybe,” Eugene laughs, because apparently this is a lot funnier than Elsa realizes. And then, “Hey, Anna—catch!”

Elsa’s head snaps around just in time to find Anna dramatically slide onto the grass on one knee, arms spread wide, mouth open… only to miss the flying grape by a berth of three feet.

“Drat! Flynn Rider, what the heck do you call that!”

Eugene and Anna begin bickering about whose fault the Fallen Grape belongs to, but Elsa is far more interested by the three newcomers trailing out behind Anna: Jamie, Pippa, and Jack.

Jamie’s grin is as boyish and curious as ever; Pippa stands tall and watchful, but her smile is warm and open and appreciative; Jack is dressed the most simply she’s ever seen him, in just jeans and a dark blue t-shirt that, for once, seem to fit him properly. He looks jumpy, but for all she knows, someone could have simply fed him too many caffeinated beverages

 _Why do you do that?_ she wonders, half-annoyed, as the other members of the party begin to take notice of the trio’s arrival and offer up their greetings. _Why do you think such things, like Jack is some lost child who cannot take care of himself? Why do you always feel the need to distance yourself?_

By the time Elsa has retreated out of her difficult lapse of self-reflection, someone has already put food and beverages into Jamie and Pippa’s hands before they’ve even moved far from the door. Jack has declined food but is holding a cup of something instead, and staring into the contents like he’s trying to figure out what they are. Anna is rambling even more than usual. All of her gestures very excitable in her oversized hoodie, and her grin is bright and true and—who knows, perhaps Anna _is_ feeling completely all right after all. _Now it’s just you, Elsa_.

Jack turns away from the small throng of people and catches sight of Elsa, who is still sitting by herself at the picnic table. She hasn’t seen him since last night on the beach, when he’d left so strangely. She waves.

He waves back, and takes a sip from his drink, and abruptly turns toward his friends.

It sets the tone for the evening.

 

//

 

The three researchers stick very close to one another. As a small pack, they easily connect with the various personalities that float towards and around them, growing more visibly comfortable as conversations shift and and grow. Ever the driver of the proverbial Welcome Wagon, Anna sticks very close to the trio herself, and so, by pure magnetic effect, so does Kristoff. Elsa keeps to Rapunzel and Eugene, near the fire. The snowflake pendant hanging from her neck twirls between her fingers.

“Are you absolutely itching to get back to work?” Rapunzel asks around the fire pit, long after the sky has grown dark and their meager flames have been kindled, when it’s just the three of them. Rapunzel’s gaze is positively exasperated with fondness; Elsa wonders how often she has actually been recipient of such a look… it is probably less often than when she has given it, herself.

“Yes,” answers Elsa. “And no.”

Eugene takes a swig from his beer, eyeing Elsa from over the top of the bottle, “Wish _I_ could make my own hours.”

“ _What_ hours?”

Elsa and Rapunzel watch on in amusement as Snotlout pays for his comment, and otherwise enjoy a few moments of silence. Outwardly, the atmosphere seems open and friendly and warm, like a late summer’s night should.

But the trickle of laughter from the picnic table behind them floats to Elsa’s ears with alarming precision. The researchers and Jack have found space for themselves at the table, and have kept up a stream of pleasantries with Anna, who seems to be glued to Pippa’s welcoming side. Kristoff, it seems, has opted to talk sports with Fishlegs over closer to where the grass meets the condo’s private dock—though how much of this is truly his choice is hard to say.

She glances at the table casually, telling herself that she looks only because she means to check on her sister. People who experience shock often have delayed symptoms and side-effects, after all. Anna, however, for all her excitableness and sudden burst of energy, seems perfectly at ease. Jamie is regaling Anna—and Hiccup, and Astrid, and Merida, and even Rapunzel, or whoever happens to come by—with stories from the research center, with funny anecdotes about early morning fish prep or the time his wetsuit got snagged on a cleat atop his boat. They laugh loudly, and quietly, and with each other. Elsa is genuinely relieved, and Eugene sticks by her side for most of the evening, in a show of solidarity that she didn’t even know was needed.

It is not how she’s expected this night to go.

//

“Hey,” Anna places a hand on Elsa’s shoulder, slightly winded from all the excitement that Elsa knows nothing about. It’s almost ten at night, and Elsa glances up from the enjoyable conversation she’s been having with Merida, with whom Elsa is finally starting to recognize some commonalities. “Jamie and Jack and Pippa have to go run an errand to the research center real quick and they said I can join them. We’ll be back in like an hour.”

Pippa and Jamie and Jack are hovering by the backdoor, talking companionably amongst themselves. Is it just her imagination, that Jack seems so tense?

“Um. I mean… Is that okay?”

Elsa blinks her way back to Anna, astounded. “What? Of course. Just text me when you make it there. Enjoy yourself.”

Anna beams. “Okay, great, talk to you soon, bye, love you!” She plants a kiss on Elsa’s cheek, sugary and buoyant, and all but jogs her way to the backdoor, where the others are giving a quick wave to the party at large and calling out little answers of _we’ll be back_! to all who ask. She watches Anna and Jamie slip through the glass sliding door with fast words and bright expressions, while Pippa rolls her eyes at something they’ve said. Elsa catches the moment Pippa glances at Jack to make sure he’s in-step. Jack is the last one to turn and wave at the backyard.

Elsa holds his eye, quite on purpose. His surprise registers in the slack of his jaw, and the halt of his step, and the stilt to his wave. It is _not_ her imagination, that his smile seems a bit of an apology.

_But why?_

And then Anna is pulling him through the frame by the wrist. Anna makes contact, and Elsa loses hers, and then the door slides shut.

Elsa is tired of thinking in metaphors.

 

//

 

Not more than a few minutes have passed when Kristoff comes to sit beside her around the fire. Neither of them say much of anything.

It’s probably one of the reasons why—his respect for Anna aside—she’s grown to like him so much.

 

//

 

The hour and forty-seven minutes that her sister is gone, Elsa is given plenty of time to consider a few truths that she may or may not have been neglecting. There are quite a few of them that she doesn’t like. The overarching truth, however, remains this:

She has avoided them for long enough.

 

//

 

“Back from saving sea life so soon?” Eugene calls from the fire pit. They have all congregated around the fire, with flannels and sweatshirts and braids and beers and five o’clock shadows. The time itself is well-past eleven, and the crew has only grown more jovial with each passing hour; the cooler is far from empty, but the box of empty bottles grows steadily more full.

“It’s _rehabilitation_ , thank you!” Anna replies, with zest. “We are hardly the ones doing the saving, here.”

Snotlout looks to Elsa, as if he might make a joke regarding the events of the day; she returns his glance. He keeps his mouth shut.

“See any fins?” Rapunzel asks curiously. Elsa has the distinct impression that maybe Rapunzel, even though she would never go so far as to impose, might have liked to be invited too. Kristoff sits at the fire beside her, between her and Hiccup, and examines the point of his S’more’s stick. Elsa knows Kristoff doesn’t usually prefer his marshmallows so well-cooked, yet the treat goes back into the flames, anyway.

“ _Ha!”_ Jamie laughs loudly. Pippa looks toward the sky. Anna blinks at Rapunzel like she is not sure what she’s been asked, and Jack seems to be looking anywhere rather than at Elsa, who is certain that she is not imagining things. “We, ah, see fins all the time at the center. More than we can count. More than you’d ever expect.”

“More than we’d like,” Pippa adds dryly.

Rapunzel is reasonably confounded by such a mixed reaction. “Do you enjoy working there?”

“Absolutely,” they respond in unison, just as Anna chimes, “I’d love to!” When surprised eyes turn towards Anna, she shrugs, and says, “What? It’d be a good internship for my program! Veterinarians need to be familiar with _all kinds_ of animals!”

Elsa watches her. “Haven’t you already declared your concentration?”

“Pfft, well. Yeah. But like. Only last June. I could still switch before classes start up in two weeks!”

Elsa is calculating the proper way to respond when Kristoff’s marshmallow finally catches fire. If there is indeed a metaphor in this, Elsa does not currently have the patience to explore it.

“That would be pretty cool,” Rapunzel admits, and they jump into a conversation about the possibilities, into which Pippa and Merida and Astrid and Ruffnut are invariably drawn. Jamie is lured into chatting with Eugene, well within Kristoff’s earshot, which Elsa knows is no accident, and Jack is invariably left hanging in the balance. Elsa dislikes the twinge in her chest, but knows now what she needs to do about it.

“Will you start working there, too?” she asks, drawing him in with her words and her eyes. If she’s no longer allowed to avoid this, then neither is he. He does not look any more comfortable with it than she feels, but she, Elsa knows, is much better practiced at hiding it. She tilts her head to the empty space beside her seat. When he takes it with only mild hesitation, she adds this note to her running list of observations.

Jack seems to be growing more comfortable with speaking English, although his vocabulary still sometimes muddles his meanings. Jack spends a great deal of time watching the fire as he speaks. He drinks his root beer slowly, in cautious sips, and he doesn’t seem bothered by the distant, creeping chill of an approaching autumn. His frame is so still, and stiff, like he is wary of moving any which way. He has given no mention of his sudden departure from the night before, or what occurred at the center that was so critical to Jamie and Pippa seeking him out in the middle of the night, or what he has been up to all day. To her confusion and vexation, he has not mentioned Elsa’s confessions, or frosted sea glass, or the stories she’s shared from the night before—nor does he give any indication that he’s heard them at all.

He responds warmly to Jamie and Pippa, and brightly to all the others. There seems to be a special brand of warmness for Anna.

Kristoff, Elsa notices, takes note as well.

 

//

 

Sometime after midnight, Kristoff excuses himself to ‘ _grab something’_ from the kitchen upstairs. After a quarter of an hour, he hasn’t returned.

Unsurprisingly, Anna quietly follows.

The others keep their comments respectfully to themselves, but Elsa feels the new undercurrent of curious tension in the yard. Jamie and Pippa seem a bit more restless as well now, eyeing each other back and forth when they think they can get away with it. Jack turns quiet and thoughtful. It’s a wonder any of them are still here, drowning in all of this unspoken awkwardness. For once, Elsa is able to rise above it, to view the mess from a distance; _it’s always so much easier to see others’ problems more clearly than one’s own, isn’t it?_

Elsa rises from her seat, which startles Jack from his thoughts. “I’m going to make an ice run,” she announces to the group, a clear getaway exit amidst a hodgepodge of conversation. (She can see Hiccup’s face, the one that says, _Why didn’t I think of that first?_ He releases a quiet sigh of acceptance, and goes back to sketching to the sound of Astrid’s animated conversation about local archery ranges with Merida. He looks about two minutes away from going off on his own to explore, and Elsa doesn’t blame him.) “Jack?”

He startles further, if possible. “Yeah?”

“Would you like to come?”

Elsa glances around, a silent call for any shopping trip requests and, also, perhaps, a silent dare for them to make assumptions; there are none of either.

(Eugene is quite possibly laughing under his breath. The others may see her invitation to Jack as a means of investigating, of further indirectly checking up on her sister—and therefore go about their business, as is good for them—but the nosy self-declared Flynn may yet know better. Rapunzel is looking too hopeful for her own good, in the meantime. Jamie suddenly looks exceptionally interested in puffing the air out of his cheeks. Elsa does not take the effort needed to see what Pippa’s expression may hold.)

“Uh. Sure.”

She waits for Jack to lift himself up, then carries herself to the glass sliding door. Eugene calls out a last-minute order at her back for another six pack, and she waves him off with a sigh of recognition, knowing that she’ll find the appropriate amount of cash on her kitchen table the next morning, or deducted from her bill upon the next trip to a restaurant. He never forgets a penny.

Jack ambles after her, muttering a quick word to his friends at the fire. She does not look back to him or the others as they slip into the Berkians’ condo, and make their way through their living room to the front door. Elsa’s keys are already in the pocket of her jacket; it’s a bit of a habit, and does not merit too much reading into.

“You can take your drink with you,” she offers, when she sees that he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. Cautiously, Jack opens the passenger-side door. She’s seen him look unsure before, but never quite this nervous. “I am not going to bite, you know.”

Jack’s shocked gaze swings toward hers. “What?”

“I know we’ve been avoiding each other tonight,” she announces, to Jack’s ever-steadily dropping jaw, “but you don’t have to act so scared of what I might say.” _I’ve learned my lesson._ “I’m not that monstrous, am I?”

“ _No_.”

She gestures to the door. “Well, then get in.”

He does, with determination. Like the speed and certainty with which he buckles himself into the seat is proof of his trust in her, or an overture of his desire to please. Whatever it is that he wants, it’s clear that he wants very much for Elsa to believe it, too. Elsa puts the car in drive with a sigh.

“I’m sorry I didn’t approach you back at the house,” Elsa begins, watching the road as she drives. From the corner of her eye, Elsa sees that Jack holds his drink carefully, with both hands. She cracks a smile; it feels tired. “I didn’t want to gather unnecessary attention. I’m sure you’ve heard, but… it’s been a long day.”

They drive over a hidden pothole in the road. It jars them both, but Jack stays cautiously still. “I’ve heard.”

“I’m not my best when I’m stressed,” she confesses. _So much for a relaxing vacation._

“And—are you still?” Jack wants to know. “Stressed?”

Elsa puts the radio on low, because the silence in the in-between is too strong. _Always_ , is probably the best answer. _More Often than I’d like_.

“It’s hard to put away something like what happened today so soon. I have a feeling it will stick with me for a bit longer, perhaps even until after we’ve returned home.”

The words linger in the space of the car for a bit longer. _Returned home_ , she hears. _Returned return return._

Jack clears his throat. “Are you… excited to go back?”

Everyone seems to keep asking her this question. “Yes,” she answers. “And no. Are you?”

“What will you do? When you go home?”

Elsa makes a left turn. Does Jack realize that she is taking the longest route possible to get to the market? She’d hazard not. “Complete a few projects. Start working on some others. Bill a few clients.” _Take some time in the mountains. Find a moment to drink that box of tea I’ve been waiting for a special occasion to open. Sit outside in the park, like I want to._ “Do some research.”

“Anna says—you own your own work. That you can—do whatever you want.”

She glances at him to the side, amused, and is surprised to find him looking at her. _Well. At least we’re back to eye contact again_. She would like to know why they stopped in the first place. _This is the last time you ever overshare, Elsa_. Mark her words.

“In some ways, yes. I started my own practice. I can choose who I’d like to work with, and when, and how. For the most part. It has its benefits.” _And its downsides._

“But you’re leaving soon—anyway? To go back?”

Whether it’s a nod to the language barrier, or just his knack for digging under Elsa’s skin, Jack has evidently learned how to ask the right questions without actually asking them. Elsa glances at him from the corner of her eye. “Well, so are you.”

He leans back into the passenger seat. She can feel a pout forming two feet to her right, and she smiles in spite of herself. She hears a stubborn, “Not _yet_.”

Elsa pulls into the small-ish parking lot for the market a few minutes later. It’s not too far from the one where she found Jack only a day or two ago, right before he offered to help walk her groceries home. Before _groceries_ led to _dinner_ and to _bonfire_ and to _storytelling_ and to _sea glass_ and to a walk along the beach. Before they decided to be afraid of one another, for some reason.

She turns the key out of the ignition, and does not get out of the car.

“I asked you to come with me because I didn’t want to sit in awkward silence around the bonfire any longer,” she tells him, though she’s pretty sure he already knows. Jack stays observedly quiet. “The truth is that you already know quite a bit more about me than you probably should, and I suppose I’m okay with that. I have shared things with you that I wasn’t really expecting to,” and suddenly Elsa has lost track of her where she’s supposed to be going with this.

Jack watches her from across the car median, eyes unblinking. “I’m glad you shared things with me,” is what falls into the air, and Elsa scoffs before she can think twice.

“Well, I wasn’t really happy about it, in the moment,” she murmurs, and she can feel Jack squint as he tries to parse through her inelegant mumbling, “but I should tell you that I’ve probably always kept too many things hidden inside before, and it’s something I’m trying to work on. Before I say anything else, I need to say that I… appreciate, that you were here this week, and willing to let me share them.”

“But… I’m _still_ here.”

Elsa ignores the sudden flush of heat. “I know,” she brushes off. “But there’s more. While I’m… glad, I suppose, that I could let out some of these stories that mean so much to me, or secrets or what have you, I also don’t want you to feel like it’s got to be an exchange.”

“A what?”

“A trade. When you give up something of yours to get something of another’s.”

“Give up?”

“Or give away,” she says. “Like stories of your own, or things about yourself you maybe don’t want to share.”

Jack’s voice is thoughtful. Quiet. Contemplative. “Like a secret?”

“Exactly,” Elsa sighs, and it feels so heavy, so long. “You and I have barely spoken since we talked last night… And I know that I’ve been curious about your program, and your learning, and last night I might have been a bit too forward with my questioning, and then you left so suddenly last night for whatever reason, which you haven’t mentioned at _all_ —but what I am trying to say is that I don’t want you to feel like you have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

Jack’s uneasy silence confirms a lot more than she’d bargained for.

“In fact,” she forges on, rather than focus on the feel of Jack’s internal conflict any longer, or the way it makes her feel like her throat is growing too tight, “I actually want to let you know that while I _would_ like to get to know you better, I am actually trying to make a habit of _not_ collecting any more secrets. I am not the most qualified person for keeping anyone’s confidence.”

“Anyone’s—what?”

“For helping them with their problems,” she clarifies, sighing at her own lack of attention to what she _knows_ is a language barrier—and for all she knows, a cultural interchange at that. “For giving them helpful advice. Keeping people’s secrets.”

“But Anna says—” he blurts, swift and quick and sudden, “that you’re good at keeping secrets.”

Elsa eyes him from the side. _So it’s a topic of discussion, then?_ Elsa wonders dryly, but she’s shockingly unsurprised; Anna, for all her unwavering loyalty, is _not_ the best at keeping others’ secrets. Elsa should know.

“I am,” she replies, but that’s the thing: she’s _too_ good at it, from too many years of practice. “But the thing about ‘keeping’ other people’s secrets is that once you learn them, you _keep_ them—they became your secrets, too.” _You start to gather them, collect them, until you have a garden, until there’s a mountain, until you’re drowning in the storm._ “And that’s the burden I’m trying to avoid.”

Jack stares at her. “But… don’t you _want_ to know?”

 _Know what?_ “Maybe some things,” she admits. “Little things. But I won’t pretend to be entitled to something I’m not, like what it is you do or where you come from or what it is you want. I _know_ that you’re here to make new friends, and I know that you’ve gotten particularly close to Anna this week,” she pauses, wondering how to continue.

The uncertain uneasiness in his eyes— _his frame, his mouth, his whole body_ —prove to her again, and again, and again, with each breath and blink and dip of the brow— _with the pink of his cheeks_ —exactly what she’s actually been trying (not) to figure out.

“Yes,” he says, like a question.

 _Okay_ , she thinks. And that’s that.

“Look. I like you, Jack. I think you’re an interesting person. I think you want to do the right thing and be nice to others and enjoy yourself.”

Jack blinks into the silence. He’s confused by her tone. “Is that… wrong?”

“Not at all,” says Elsa, who means it, who can’t help but wonder why it _did_ sound wrong, when she said it, why it always sounds like she’s scolding the world at large when she speaks. “I think you’re a good person, and I am glad I met you, so I don’t want you to take it the wrong way when I say that I don’t need to know everything that happens between you all—or even that I want to, because the truth is that I _don’t_.”

Jack’s brain is whirring through all of this at lightning speed, putting all of her pieces together, but the one piece he picks out among the rest is: “You _don’t_ ?” and “You… _all_ ? Who is _all?_ ”

The answer suddenly seems very silly, but Jack probably deserves to know what’s going on inside her head.

“The friends that you’ve found for yourself,” she tells him. “The group that you’ve amassed this week.”

His head looks ready to explode, and Elsa silently credits him with all the effort is must be taking to translate this, to understand _her_. “But,” he asks, flabbergasted. “Aren’t you a part of it, too?”

Elsa can’t help the little wry smile that dips onto her mouth. The awkwardness of so many consecutive confessions is starting to catch up with her, even if she’s still apt at controlling her features.

“Well. Maybe in some ways. But I should admit that I was avoiding you tonight, yes, because I didn’t want you to feel obligated to reciprocate my trust—but also because… through my own personal issues, and through no one else’s fault but my own… I suppose I’ve felt a bit… invisible, from whatever bond it is that you’ve created with Anna and the others.”

“ _Wh_ —what!” Jack moves so quickly in his seat that the belt nearly chokes him. Elsa’s eyes widen with alarm as Jack struggles against the strap, enough to feel the need to set his glass bottle firmly into one of her empty cup holders. Elsa gently reaches down, and presses the button that releases Jack from his torment.

There is a hush of silence as Jack begins to recognize the aftermath of his spastic movement, his impaired breathing. Does he yet know the meaning of embarrassment? Elsa is beginning to wonder.

“That isn’t—” he tries. “That’s not what I want.”

Elsa’s mouth curves into a show of understanding. “I know.”

Jack meets his wit’s end.

“Well, then what am I supposed to do!” his sudden, startled voice reverberates off the inside of the car walls, the felt ceiling. It’s loud and uncontrolled and _young_ and confused, and Elsa sort of envies him, that he—like Anna—can let such things out so easily, so openly, without fear of consequence. “You want to know, but you _don’t_ want to know, you don’t want to be friends, but we _are_ friends—you don’t make any sense!”

It’s perhaps the longest stream of language Jack has thrown at her thus far. “I know,” she says, directly, without argument. “I’m sorry.”

Her quick admission just frustrates him further. He lets out a groan into the tiny space of the car, both hands over his face. It is a terrible time to find him endearing.

“Why do you make things so difficult!” he demands of the ceiling, and Elsa knows one hundred percent that she is being scolded. _I am an awful person_ , she decides, _for finding even the tiniest bit of humor in this_. But her heart is aching, too. Just a little.

“Jack,” Elsa huffs, but it’s more of a laugh. “I’m afraid I’m a bit of work in progress.” She unbuckles her seatbelt with more grace than could be said of Jack, who is still riled enough to have forgotten to turn back around in his seat. She enjoys watching his expression a bit too much, she thinks, when she sends a disarming smile his way. “Human, remember?”

She opens the car door and steps down. When she looks back inside, he is still watching her.

“Coming?”

 

//

 

“For the—record,” he says, when he meets her near the front of the car, sandaled feet over pavement and fluorescent lights shining from beyond glass windows, “I think you—are wrong.”

“How so?”

“To keep secrets—is a burden, like you said. But it’s a gift, too. Sharing them—even, when you don’t expect to—is showing that you care about someone.”

Elsa thinks of cold years and knocks on locked doors and wishing she were different. Of catharsis and relief and fear and all of the things in between.

“You haven’t changed my mind,” she tells him, “but I see your point.”

Jack smiles at her like he’s won, and—even though she’s certain he _hasn’t_ , technically—she walks into the market on unsteady legs.

 

//

 

“You have cash?” Elsa asks in surprise. Jack hands over a five dollar bill to the cashier in exchange for a brand new bottle of root beer. Not a pack. Just one.

“From Jamie,” Jack answers absently. He has been thinking very hard since they left the car. Elsa can’t help but notice how close together they are standing, or how concentrated his movements seem to be, or how obviously they keep stealing glances at one another when they think the other is not looking.

Elsa is hoping that whatever is left between them will be resolved on the car ride back home.

“He seems like a good friend,” Elsa comments, wry and honest and open, checking Jack’s profile carefully.

Jack receives his change.

“He is.”

//

No matter how transparent the ruse, Elsa keeps to her word about the ice run. (And Eugene’s beer from the late-night liquor store next door. Jack is commanded to wait outside, however, because like hell she is going to suffer through hours of Eugene’s complaining because she was denied service for being reckless enough to bring a young, possibly-under-the-legal-age-of-drinking person into the shop with her. _Does he even have an ID?_ )

Anyway, the ice: she brings back four bags of it, which is more than enough to last them quite possibly through a whole other beach day. The weather is supposed to be much more favorable for the rest of the week, which is a kind of magic that Elsa will not take for granted.

Jack is still deep in thought as they walk back to the car. He’s carrying three of the four bags—heedless of the fact that this requires all but hugging the bags to his chest, impressive wingspan and all—and wordlessly places them in the trunk at her gesture, then returns to the passenger seat with steadily growing intensity. Elsa looks at him across the cupholder while she buckles herself in.

“What is it?” she asks.

For a long moment, Jack keeps his eyes trained on the glove compartment box. Does he know what a glove compartment box is? Has the boy ever worn gloves in his life? Is he still frustrated with her?

“Anna said you—swam in the ocean today,” he begins, as filled with as much uncertainty as she is. “Because she needed help.”

It’s a bit out of left field, but Elsa has thrown enough curve balls at _him_ this evening not to bat an eye. “That’s true…”

Jack chews over his words. “I am… sorry that it took such a bad thing to happen, for you to go back to the sea.”

Elsa bites the inside of her cheek, turns the key, and drives. “So am I.”

She startles when he turns towards her a few minutes later, eyes alight: “We should go now.”

She glances uncertainly to the road, back to Jack, back to the road. “…to the condo?”

“No. To the beach. You and—me.”

Elsa’s eyes widen. “Are you joking?”

“Usually—yes,” Jack grins suddenly, enough to give her whiplash. “But not right now.”

“Are you saying we should go to the ocean—in the dark, in the middle of the night— _right now?_ Or not right now? I’m confused.”

“Right. Now.”

Elsa stares at him for as long as she feels comfortable. Blinks. Huffs, and turns on the turn signal. “You’re a strange character, Jack. No.”

“Why not!”

“Jack,” Elsa explains, as patiently as she can. “I almost lost my sister today. I wouldn’t be in the mood to go back today even if it were broad daylight.”

“What about tomorrow?”

Elsa laughs, sharp and sudden and more genuine than she would like, but something _unknowing_ has slipped around her spine. He is awfully intent on this.

“Who knows?” she brushes it off. “Ask me tomorrow.”

She knows that he will.

But in the meantime, Jack leans back with a near-pout, but accepts her answer for what it is.

//

They return to cheers of thanks and gratitude. Eugene is particularly vocal. They all seem to be in considerably higher spirits. Kristoff and Anna are still missing, but no one seems all that worried.

Elsa releases a sigh and cracks open a bottle for herself, and Jack sits next to her near the fire and watches her with wide, curious eyes, and it’s all very… anticlimactic. Like the rising tension has kept rising and rising and rising and now that’s just all it is—a steady stream of tension, so commonplace and so persistent that it’s just background noise, that’s it’s just sitting under Elsa’s skin, waiting for an outlet to reveal itself. Her skin is electrified, her lungs too full, and it’s just as Elsa is starting to wonder _is this what it’s going to be, then?_ and _Is it possible that I actually want more than this?_ as she watches Jack stare determinedly into the fire, and watches his mouth, that it begins to rain.

“ _Again!?_ ” is Flynn Rider’s outcry.

The party makes a run for the indoors, multiple sprints across the grass with coolers and packaged food and unplugged fairly lights, and through the laughter and the alarm both Pippa and Jamie announce that they are heading out, but Jack decides to stay.

Anna and Kristoff have reappeared only long enough to help transport the supplies inside, flushed faces and bright eyes and absolutely no comment on the matter whatsoever, and then when all is done the two of them chat with Jack at the kitchen table Elsa makes them all a fresh pot of tea and watches without looking. By the time the tea is poured, the other members of their impromptu barbecue party have long retreated to the warmth of the Berkians’ condo downstairs, from where she can hear their raucous singing and laughter through the floorboards and the cracks in the open windows and the patter of rain. Inside the condo of Arendelle, however, it is cool with fresh breezes and surf carried by the wind, with gentle lamplight, and then no lamplight at all, to better watch the lightning strike purple across the sea. Kristoff and Anna take refuge in his room to watch the show of nature by themselves, and Elsa finds it easier to ignore the surge of protectiveness, avoids the urge to protest. She likes Kristoff. She trusts him. And from the looks of things, Kristoff and Anna still have much to talk about.

So Elsa finds peace with Jack at the large sliding door-window to the balcony, where they sit upon pillows and drink their (sweetened, unsweetened) tea. He sips and he savors, and unlike the last storm, Jack does not seem concerned at the high peaks that crash and break. There is a feeling of satisfaction in them that she cannot place.

“I’m glad I met you, Jack,” she tells him, fiddling with her necklace, because it’s easier than trying to reconcile the fact that she would like to be closer to him, without knowing who he is. ( _But she does—doesn’t she?_ ) It’s easier than admitting to herself that she might want to kiss him.

It has been a long, long time since she has wanted to be this close to anyone.

But maybe _tomorrow_ , Elsa thinks, when this strange surge of something doesn’t feel so new, when she feels like she has a better grip on herself. Tonight is for hot tea and thunderstorms, for the two of them gathering blankets and pillows near the window, for the hazy blue light of a well-lit sky and the moon, for sitting in silence that’s more comfortable than she could have ever hoped for. Tonight, Elsa sits in appreciative contemplation next to Jack, and waits, and knows that—tomorrow—she will decide what to do about this curious urge to let him in.

Jack smiles back at her, eyes so openly hopeful, and she knows that _tomorrow_ —that will be the day.

 

//

 

Jack wakes up on the floor of their living room.

Elsa know this because, two hours previously, so did she.

“Good morning,” Elsa quietly greets from the kitchen, undeniably amused, as Jack sits up and blinks at his surroundings. The soft rain is still falling outside, and he has a terrible case of bedhead. “Anna won’t wake for another hour or so, but breakfast is ready if you want it.”

Kristoff is an early riser like she— _too many years of routine_ , he says—but he’s gone off on a quick jog through the mist. (So has Astrid, but Kristoff prefers his runs to be made alone, and so they pass by each other occasionally, and wave.) He’s been gone for much longer than usual, so Elsa is already drinking another cup of tea. It should feel boring, or mundane maybe, but there is a hint of something in the air like anticipation. She’s actually excited to get out of the condo today.

Jack is already well into his third pancake by the time Anna emerges from her room—her hair is a total mess, enough to put Jack’s cowlicks to shame—and she’s mid-stretch and mid-yawn when she stops short at the sight of Jack at their kitchen table, wearing the same clothes as the night before. Elsa _tsks_ at her blatantly gaping expression, and willfully pours the tea into her mug, daring her to voice _anything_ . Anna gets the hint, even if her eyes are too bright to be completely trusted, and normal chatter picks up from where they left off the evening before, and then some new (“ _Have you ever heard of a_ flap _jack, Jack_?”) and all is well. Even if Elsa turns around from the stovetop every so often, and catches sight of Anna and Jack having a completely different conversation with their smiles, all is well.

She rolls her eyes and grins and flips a pancake, and tries not to think too disparagingly, too giddily of what it means to feel like this.

 

//

 

Before she knows it, the Berkians have texted to signal the nearing end of their riotous breakfast feast downstairs. Rapunzel and Eugene arrive on site just after the members of Arendelle amble down the outdoor steps. Jack has tamed his hair and wet his face and been offered to borrow a change of clothes from Hiccup. Elsa wonders if it might be strange to see him wear anything other than the color blue, but it turns out that black is not a terrible alternative.

There are too many loud bodies in a single space, especially for so early in the morning, with the backdrop of rain ever comforting ( _so much for our beach day_ ) and a spike of energy at every turn, and then they set out for the day. Jack spends time with them inside the shopping arcade (“ _This isn’t a real arcade!”_ shouts Snotlout, and “ _Where are the games!”_ ) and a restaurant and indoors at various shops, and Elsa feels the easiest, the most free she has all week. She stands close enough to allow a brush of sleeves or a touch of shoulders or a too-close smile given for a touch too long. The sensation wells up in her chest, bubbling like its own brand of contentment, and at this point it would be undeniable (impossible, inconvenient, unavoidable) to admit that she’s attracted to him, but.

It’s ridiculous.

By early afternoon they’ve gravitated their way to the _actual_ arcade—not the strip of indoor shops and restaurants, which caused a swelling of true disappointment for Snotlout and Tuffnut, but the _actual_ arcade, with games and challenges and tickets and prizes and—

Jack is very good in the arcade. Like—shockingly good. She’s never seen someone so single-mindedly focused or competitive, not even with knowing the Berkians for as long as she has. There is snark— _Who taught him sarcasm!_ Elsa wants to know, _Who!_ —and jabs and, dare she say it, a fair level of trash-talk, but Jack keeps winning: keeps rolling his miniature bowling balls with pinpoint precision, keeps dropping his tokens into _just the right spot_ to cause an overflow, keeps pushing buttons _relentlessly_ , or—as in the case of the machine in which only a single press to the button is needed, in order to force the traveling light to stop _exactly on target—_ only once, quite perfectly, every time. It’s like nothing Elsa has ever seen before, like nothing she ever thought possible, like the best stroke of luck she has ever witnessed, or some kind of ridiculous magic, or more likely just really incredible hand-eye coordination and single-minded focus, or, who knows—maybe it is caffeine, after all.

She can’t say for certain. She didn’t witness whatever it is that Kristoff put into his to-go cup as they left the condo that morning, or whatever they did when the two of them went off and disappeared in search of the snack bar an hour or so ago, and Kristoff _is_ basically losing his mind over the strength of their good luck here, practically dragging both his hands through his blond mane in sheer, competitive _joy_ —

“Hey, Jack,” Anna says softly, wearing the ridiculously large scarf of the hundreds of tickets that he has showfully won for her. Elsa and Kristoff both look up at Anna’s tone, as does Jack, but Anna is looking toward the wide entrance, toward the missing wall that opens directly to the rainy boardwalk. “I think that lady is waiting for you.”

Elsa looks to the sidewalk in the same moment that Jack does. Standing at the entrance is a woman who is clearly waiting for Jack to notice her. A woman who Elsa finds stunningly and uncommonly beautiful.

She is wrapped in fine gem-toned silks and adorned with wide golden earrings; her watchful expression is drawn with thick and shapely brows and fierce, bright, gem-like eyes. As the woman watches them (expression neutral, the tight-lipped curve of her mouth unreadable), Anna unconsciously tugs at the scarf of tickets around her neck. Elsa receives the vague impression that—in another time, another life, another story—this woman could have been a queen.

Without fully contemplating the matter, Elsa holds her chin high, and means to match.

(By the lingering line of the woman’s gaze... Elsa has a feeling that she does.)

At first, Jack seems just as stunned by the sight of her as they do, but after a long moment, he straightens. Elsa tears her eyes from the woman to watch as Jack lifts himself from his battle-stance over the arcade game machine and stands tall, and takes on a face of determination she has not seen since he told her to flee the storm and disappeared in a jeep with the engine still-running. He does not seem particularly upset to see the woman, or even very surprised. If anything, Jack appears to be every inch a young man who knows that he is, for lack of a better phrase—in for a Talk.

“Excuse me,” he says quietly, biting his cheek and stepping away from the machine. “Be right back.”

Anna and Elsa watch him go, trying not to gape, but not with much success.

“ _Who the hell was that?_ ” asks Snotlout, who scurries over as soon as Jack and the mysterious woman round the corner out of sight. Are they still protected by the awning over the boardwalk? Are they walking together in the rain? “ _Why didn’t he introduce me!_ ”

Elsa and Anna and Kristoff try to continue their playing, but without their Victor, the victories don’t quite have the same effect. The others are all still enjoying themselves, of course, but for the three of them…

“Is that his homestay mother?” Elsa finally asks, no longer able to hold it inside. “His program advisor? She had a very authoritative air about her.” _She seems much… older._

This line of questioning does not yield any results, however. Anna seems to twitch. “Not sure,” she shrugs. “Could be a friend, or something. I dunno. He didn’t seem too worried though.”

Elsa can’t disagree, exactly, but it doesn’t seem so simple. “He acted like he was in trouble.”

“In danger?” Kristoff asks, eyebrows jumping high.

“No. More like… in _trouble_ ,” Elsa wonders. “Like he got caught doing something wrong.”

Anna lets out a short laugh, surprising Elsa. “Well, that guy has definitely not been a complete angel since he got here, for sure. He probably knows exactly whatever it is that he’s gotten himself into, and he probably knows exactly how to get out of it.”

“ _Has_ he gotten into something?”

At Anna’s blank stare, Kristoff offers a hefty shrug. “You know. The usual.”

“Like what?”

“Like Jack-stuff,” Anna answers absently. Elsa’s brows furrow, dissatisfied, but, “Oh! Hold on, that’s him texting now.”

Her expression angles further. “You have his number?” _He has yours?_

“Well, yeah, after we found out he got a little cell phone, it only made sense, right? Here, it looks like he had to go check in for an impromptu meeting or something, but he wants to hang out later. Elsa, could you pick him up at the research center a like nine tonight?”

“ _Nine_?” Elsa echoes, feeling her stomach sink. “So late?”

“Guess it’s a pretty hefty meeting,” Kristoff supplies. Elsa turns a look on him, and ever-so-slightly, he withers. _Not_ helpful, Kristoff.

“He’s got some stuff to sort out, so it will probably take a while,” is what Anna concludes her relay with, and then puts her phone to sleep in her pocket. “We should grab something to eat before the restaurants get too packed, and then find something cool to do."

“Yes,” Elsa agrees, tapping her fingernails along the edge of a machine. “But first, I need you to text me Jack’s number.”

She ignores the slyness that slips into her sister’s gaze. Anna, still wearing her ridiculous scarf-gift, throws one end across her neck and over her shoulder, with flourish. “Oh, _yes?_ ”

“Oh, _hush_ , Anna.”

 

//

 

Elsa _does_ pick up Jack from the research center. She arrives at quarter to nine.

The rain still drizzles onto the roof of her car, but at this point it’s more of a slight haze or a mist than actual drops. The air is one constant cycle of coastal chill, but Elsa doesn’t mind. It’s been a lovely reprieve from all the intense summertime heat, and it’s soothing to listen to the sounds from within her car, cozy with a jacket and a book to read by the light of her overhead. The sky above the rocky shore and docks by the research center is already dark.

 _It’s Elsa_ , she texts after a few pages, when she feels that the hour is close enough. _I’m outside._

A loud, insistent knocking on her window sends both the book and her expression askew.

" _Jack!_ ” she gasps, _astounded_ . She can’t seem to get her breath back into her lungs. “ _What on earth―!_ ”

"Hey!" comes Jack's loud, forceful whisper and _why are they whispering?_ “Let’s go! Jamie will be back soon and he said if I was gonna show you it'd have to be when he isn't here so he'd have liability!”

"Liability?" Elsa echoes his loud whisper, but she's already getting out of the car with—or perhaps in spite of—his frenetic attempts of assistance: opening the car door, pushing the button of her seatbelt far many more times than necessary, etc. "What _kind_ of liability? Aren't I supposed to be driving you back to the others right now?”

“Oh, wait, maybe it was the other word―I am getting confused, but it doesn't matter, because Jamie and Pippa and Monty and Caleb and Claude and Cupcake gave me permission to come here, and Jamie said I can show you beyond the docks as long as he doesn't see!"

She doesn’t recognize all the names, or see how they matter, and isn’t all that interested anyway because Elsa plants her heel in the ground, and will not budge, despite his sudden bout of pleading, pouting looks. "Jack..." she says slowly. Dangerously. ”Do you mean... ‘ _deniability_ ’?”

“It’s a _poss_ ibility?” he chirps, and Elsa blinks, astonished, and then he’s off. “Come on!”

“ _Jack!_ The sign says the research center is closed to the public!”

“Yeah, but we ain’t—the public! Come on!”

 _This is a terrible idea_ , Elsa thinks, even as she hastens after him, through the front doors into an empty, albeit well-lit lobby, behind the main counter and the old pamphlets and into a backroom that Elsa has never seen before, which is all paperwork and calendars and smells strongly of fish.

“Here, leave your stuff here, so you don’t lose it,” Jack holds out a plastic bin he swipes from a desk.

“What stuff?”

“You know—stuff. Like your keys, or your wallet, or your phone, or—”

“Where are we going?”

Jack grins at her. His excitement is so palpable Elsa’s heart actually begins thudding in her chest. He’s like a little kid, only he’s _not_ , and Elsa certainly doesn’t feel that way. Her fingers feel too shaky for their own good.

“To see Jamie’s research,” he answers, almost vibrating, and gives the plastic bin in his hand a meaningful shake. “Jamie will be back soon—it will be totally safe.”

Against her better judgment, she believes him.

With a sigh, Elsa removes the contents of her jacket pockets: her wallet, her phone, her keys. He grins like a maniac, and then all but tosses the plastic bin to the desk, and then keeps going, always checking over his shoulder to ensure that she’s still following.

They go deeper into the building, until they reach the other side, and come to a screened-in porch deck that has wooden stairs leading down to many tiers of wooden decks, to the docks, to the open water, to the small space in the wide harbor in which the research center rests. The only reason she keeps going is because, apparently, Jamie has given Jack some sense of wayward permission to see whatever it is that they’re about to see. That, and the knowledge that they could probably talk their way out of trouble, if caught for trespassing. Well. _She_ could, at the very least. _What on earth am I doing here?_

“Why isn’t Jamie here to show us himself?” Elsa asks as they carefully trot down the wooden steps to the lowest tier of the decks, the one that casts out into the water in a multitude of docks, all hosting a variety of boats and vehicles and jet skis. As they leave the lowest deck, striding down a short series of more wooden steps to the gravel and sediment and rounded stones that lead to the dark openness of the rocky beach, Elsa wonders, “Why are you so excited about this? Couldn’t this have waited until the morning? _Daylight?_ ”

“So many questions,” Jack laughs, bright and honest, and Elsa can’t argue, can’t ignore the way her heart still pounds or her stomach feels light, fluttery, can’t bring herself to turn around. She should know better than this, but—for once—it might be nice to try something new. To take a few moments without getting bogged down with worrying. To just—go with it.

“What kind of research is he doing?” she asks, because of all the questions she’s asked so far, it’s one that she thinks he might actually be willing to answer. She’s not wrong.

“A whole bunch,” Jack breathlessly explains, and he catapults himself over a low wooden railing. Elsa follows at a more sedate pace, with a more cautious maneuvering of limbs. This might still be the property of the research center, but it also might not be. “Tons of stuff. Stuff that he’s gonna get published for, because—he knows his stuff. Stuff that he’s helping the ocean with. Stuff that’s still secret.”

The way he says it causes Elsa to glance sideways at him. “Is _that_ what we’re here to see tonight?” Jack says nothing, but the mischievousness about him speaks volumes. “Really, Jack? A whole conversation last night about me not wanting to keep any more secrets, and _that’s_ what you want to show me? More secrets?”

“Just one,” Jack promises with a laugh. He does not sound apologetic at all.

But Elsa isn’t quite ready to buy into it yet. “Why?” she asks him.

“Because it’s too important not to share,” he tells her, which surprises her. “And because I want to show you.”

It’s a hard argument to shoot down. And, if Elsa’s being honest with herself, the truth of his words shake something in her chest that she’d been trying very hard not to notice.

They travel further down the beach, farther and farther and farther away from the main. Soon she feels moisture from the not-too-distant sea begin to creep up into the soles of her shoes. She wasn’t expecting to find herself at a beach tonight. (Or maybe she was, if she thinks back to that conversation in the car—but not one so small, and so rocky, and so close to a place of science.) She is ill-prepared in her tennis shoes and jeans, in her long-sleeve shirt and light jacket. The breeze goes right through her, and while she doesn’t mind, it reminds her too much of the flush in her skin and the heat in her chest and why she’s following this ridiculous young man in the first place.

“So this is Jamie’s research?” she clarifies, mostly for something to say. “His official work?”

“Nah—jus stuff he likes, and watches for, but won’t ever write down.”

“Seems like a strange thing for a researcher,” Elsa comments. “What kind of stuff?”

Jack doesn’t answer. He only smiles, and walks them closer to the dark of the waves. The ocean is loud and active and full of energy, but instead of feeling restless or anxious, the air is lively and satisfied. Jack seems to be aware of it too, inhaling the salt and brine with deep, greedy breaths, and the stir of the ocean sets the fine hairs of Elsa’s arms on-end, fills her veins with something dangerously close to excitement. If Jack is so pleased, then how bad can this be?

“Come down to the water with me,” he says, walking forwards and backwards and sideways, spinning and tripping over the endless expanse of stones and before she knows it, she’s grinning without meaning to, without showing teeth, but with warmth and fondness and this is the most ridiculous thing, she is ridiculous, it’s almost embarrassing.

“The tide is so low,” Elsa marvels, walking alongside his boundless energy. “It should be changing soon, shouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jack laughs, and it carries on the breeze, floating and free and happy. “Yeah, it’s already started.”

They’re so far from the building that all Elsa can see are the lights, and nothing of the rooms or the activity inside them. Jamie could already be back for all she knows, and she would be none the wiser. Meanwhile, they are so encased in protective darkness that someone practically next to them might not even realize they’re there. It’s an idea that turns over ideas in Elsa’s head, that warms her blood more than she’d like.

“Let’s sit,” he announces, and plops down to the still damp stretch of layers and layers of Cape Cod rocks with more aplomb than she’s probably ever given him credit for. He’s so spastic and impulsive and awkward—yet there’s a strange sort of grace to him, a sort of confidence and ease and growing comfort with his skin and his surroundings that Elsa can’t help but envy. It’s a fascinating mix.

Elsa’s thoughts stop short when she sees that he’s looking up at her expectantly. “Right here?” she asks, incredulous, and looks at the still-wet sand beneath them, at the rocks and the nearing tide. The shoreline is already creeping higher up the beach, little by little by little and, according to her calculations, sitting in this spot would mean that it wouldn’t be long before they’d be overtaken by the waves.

She arches a brow, and allows a bit of her incredulity to seep through. “I hope you weren’t expecting me to go for a swim this evening,” she notes dryly.

Jack laughs, short and loud, and says, “No. No, I know—you’ve already had your share for this week, you say. I hope you don’t mind if I might, though.”

Elsa is taken aback. “In the dark?”

“Sometimes—that is the best.”

Her huff is more of a scoff. “I won’t be jumping in after you,” she tells him clearly, and then sits down on the rocky beach beside him. She’d been planning to give him a bit of space, but it seems that her eyesight isn’t as well-adjusted to the blue-black ocean hues and moonlight as she’d thought. Or maybe she just wanted to sit closer to him, after all. She’s done trying to second-guess. “I’ve already had much more time in the water than I bargained for.”

Jack’s expression turns thoughtful, almost somber. Elsa could _kick_ herself. She opens her mouth to apologize for ruining the bright, easy mood, but Jack looks to the sea with contemplating eyes. “Are you still worried about her?” he asks.

The sounds of waves rush over them. “Always,” she says.

Jack nods, slowly, like he’s taking it in. “Are you worried about yourself?”

 _Always_ , her mind whispers. “Not as much as I worry about her.”

The side of his wry mouth tilts up, and Elsa’s stomach drops, it twists and pulls her heart down with it, tosses and jumbles them all together. _He has such a pretty face_ , she finds herself thinking. _Such a pretty, handsome face_ , and such blue eyes, and such a nice mouth, and a nice smile, and an open heart and mind and soul, all linked together in such a funny little frame, such a strange and interesting character that Elsa has never known before. He’s more perceptive than she initially thought, funnier and more clever than his language barrier might allow, but she gets the feeling that with—maybe—a little more time, the rest of him might not be much harder to figure out. Maybe she could spend years and never figure him out entirely.

“You’re sort of a puzzle,” Elsa declares, narrowing her gaze at him, but not unkindly. She leans back onto her hands, bends her knees and tucks her legs close to her, the way Jack has. “Do you know that?”

Jack’s eyes drop to the shoreline in front of them, to the brush of sea foam that almost reaches their feet, their knees. Neat, white teeth appear in the soft spill of the dark, and Elsa feels her heart soaring in her chest, this stupid pull of gravity or attraction or whatever nonsense this is, but she doesn’t move forward or back or any way at all, not yet.

“Jamie will probably be able to explain this stuff better than I can,” Jack admits, watching the foam bubbles burst and break over the nearby pebbles and rocks. The rocks are so smooth, so round, like they’ve known the ocean for years. “He’s good at explaining stuff.”

“His research?”

“Lots of things,” Jack breathes, watching the sea inch closer. It’s moving so slowly that Elsa thinks it might be better if they just stop _looking_ for changes, if they just let it happen and notice when it’s already upon them, and _you told yourself you were going to stop thinking in metaphors_ , she chides, but the thought halts in her head, the feel of Jack’s cool fingers being placed atop hers kills the breath on her lips.

Elsa looks to their hands. She likes the way it looks, the way it feels. His profile is so serious, so determined, so bright-eyed all at once, and Elsa believes that this is as good as any a time to give in.

“Jack,” she says, and waits for him to face her, so she can do what she’s been waiting to do for much longer than she’s probably even realized.

And she would have done it herself, had his expression been anything other than what it is when he turns to face her: eyes alive with a resurgence of energy so bright and so vivid that she loses her breath all over again. It stops her in her tracks for a moment, but then she feels the pull— _so much stronger and fuller and more vibrant_ —and she’s so entranced by the gentle pressure of a large, cool hand squeezing her own and the focus in his eyes that she hardly registers when he reaches for her jaw with his other hand, when he presses his mouth to hers.

It’s soft, and cool, and so much more gentle than she would have ever expected—all his quick movements and fiercely animated expressions and darting smiles—and it’s lovely, her head is spinning with it, the waves crashing in her ears with her heartbeat and and his thumb on her cheek and his fingers in the sweep of her braid. _This isn’t so bad_ , she thinks as she pulls away slightly to take a breath, which is the understatement of the century, which is so ridiculous in the grand scheme of how wonderful she feels, that she can’t help but smile against his lips, can’t help but laugh light and soft and content against the smile he breathes back into her. She’s still laughing, she’s light-headed with _I can’t believe I’m doing this_ and _I could do this for a long, long time_ , when he uses his grip on her hand to pull her closer over the rocks, smooth stones brushing against jeans and sneakers and hips and suddenly they topple sideways.

 _This is a terrible place to do this_ , she thinks, grinning foolishly at his little hiss of pain and discomfort as his elbow collides with a particularly rock, but loving his stupid, unabashed grin as they fall back together, fall in together, soft mouths pressing gentle and firm and fierce. Her bent legs straighten over the rocks as he raises himself higher with his forearms, hovering his shoulders over hers, threading the hand at her nape deeper into the thick of her hair until it’s almost a pillow against the beach, until it’s pulling her deeper into him. He must not be expecting her hands to do much more than rest over the rocks, because she worms her palm out from under the grip of his other hand and uses both of them to cradle his face, to hold steady when he gasps into her open mouth, when he presses down into her lips and her tongue invites him in.

It’s the sounds and the little breaths and all the cool warmth of the kiss, and when she twists her tongue into the gorgeous noise he makes above her, she wonders if he knows her so well enough that this is why he’s brought her here, to the perfect protection of a dark beach in a safe harbor on the secluded stretch of shore. Where she could just _be_ , where they could see and be unseen, where she doesn’t have to worry, or keep watch, or keep ( _too many more_ ) secrets that aren’t her own.

 _Too bad Anna won’t be learning about this for months_ , is the stray thought that crosses her mind. The subsequent amusement passes through her lips, strong enough that Jack starts laughing, like it’s contagious. Or maybe the both of them are just delirious—high off the night and the sea and the moonlight, and every step of this is madness, but for once, finally, Elsa can’t bring herself to care.

“What’s so—funny?” Jack asks against her mouth and, _god_ , she could get used to this, she really, really could. The sight of his lips all swollen and his hair all mussed reminds her of when he woke up in her living room this morning, next to her on the floor in a heap of blankets from the closet, the storage bin, her bed. She thinks of her bed at the condo, of the soft sheets and too-big mattress, and what she might like to do there.

“This is not something I’ve done before,” she grins against his mouth, drags her hands to his neck, to his shoulders, to the bare arms under the sleeves of another borrowed t-shirt. Through the fabric, her fingertips find the muscles of his chest, the ridges and lines of his stomach, the place where the breath hitches when he gasps. “Making out at night on a beach,” she laughs into another kiss, and another, because this is stupid, honestly, this is almost downright childish, but it’s intoxicating, it’s a freedom and a power and feeling she’s not acknowledged before, and certainly not in a place like this.

“Neither—have I,” he cuts off, because Elsa’s fingers have slipped onto the bare skin of his back. 

She smiles against his surprise, against the overwhelmed slack of his mouth, and kisses him with her lips and her hands until he regains himself, until his kisses turn fierce and fiery, like he can’t get enough, like he could devour her, and then the first brush of the sea seeps into her tennis shoes, unexpected and fiercely cold.

Elsa pulls away to remark on the unusual and inconvenient choice of their location, to make a joke or simply laugh again, but Jack is not looking at her.

His eyes are fixed on the point at which Elsa’s shoes are again being caressed by the arriving wave, at the meager space between where he lies astray and where the waves will reach. She’s about to speak up and invite him back to her condo— _group plans be damned_ —when Elsa’s attention is drawn to the snowflake at her neck, and the surprising realization that it is resting in Jack’s gentle hand. How long has he been holding it?

It feels meaningful, the way he turns it over in his fingers. Like a reminder of his first appeal for friendship, or the first true test of her patience and kindness, her willingness to give someone another chance. It means a lot to her. She owes it to him that she still has it at all.

The waves rush up over her toes, over the tops of her feet, but she doesn’t mind. She distracts Jack from whatever it is he’s so focused on with a kiss that sears all the way down her spine; he gives up on contemplating the ocean and returns her kiss with full force, immediately. It’s overpoweringly gratifying.

Then Jack leans back from her and lifts his borrowed shirt up, off, and away from his body. Elsa blinks.

“Here?” she can’t help it, the laughter or the scoff or the genuine disbelief, because honestly, _who is this guy?_ and why the hell is she so attracted to him? (She knows. She _knows_ , but—) The laughter is spilling out of her tonight, steady and full, and as much as she would really like for this to continue—especially now that he’s done away with his shirt—she is a grown woman with a salary and a warm bed, and as much as she’s thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of this stint out on the rocky beach, really, she can provide so much more than this. But then she realizes that he’s unzipping the edge of his jeans, sighing deeply as he sends furtive glances to the coming waves, and Elsa’s blood feels the creeping chill of the ocean breeze take hold.

Her chest caves with the startling realization of what he means to do.

“You’re going for a swim?” she demands, astounded. “ _Now?_ ”

Her voice is crisp and disbelieving, and if it’s in her nature to sound cold and uncaring when she’s surprised or disappointed, then it’s something that she’s working on, but, honestly, _what?_

Jack stands, which is an answer in and of itself. The water reaches Elsa’s ankles, so she kicks her heels in, curling her legs to her core as she watches up in profound amazement at the utter absurdity of what she is witnessing. His expression is endlessly sheepish, but his eyes are alight, and that curious tension is back. The tiny canine that angles out his smile—the one that screams _mischief_ —is clear in plain view, and Elsa cannot believe this right now.

She doesn’t even have the decency of mind to avert her eyes when he kicks off his sandals and steps out of his jeans, wearing only a pair of black shorts underneath, and she is just about to lose it when she thinks he’s going to drop _those_ too, but instead he starts forward, and steps back, and turns up at the sky in whirlwind of indecision, then interlaces his fingers behind his skull as he looks down at her, apologetic and sheepish and fiercely, fiercely determined.

“You, ah,” Jack swallows, and even in the dark, Elsa can see the blush spreading like wildfire over his cheeks and neck, over the top of his chest. “I got—distracted.”

“ _...distracted?_ ”

“From—what I want to show you,” he tries to use his hands to communicate, but they fly through the air between them inarticulately, and Elsa has half a mind to shove him in the water, or to stand up and stalk back towards her car and forget this evening ever happened, or to pull him right back down as he is, and force him to forget about whatever it is that he thinks is so important to show her.

She’s leaning towards the last.

“ _Jack_ ,” she begins, and it sounds impatient because she _is_ , and faintly irritated too, and she’s halfway through a disappointed sigh to the sea when all of a sudden Jack dips down and plants a shock of a kiss over her lips, then flits away into the nearing shallows before she can even so much as dart a hand out to deliver retribution.

“Just watch!” he calls, excitable and nervous and determined and Elsa sighs, and leans back on her hands and scoots herself out of the way of the waves. She watches on in moderate humor because she wants to _humor_ him, but also because he is going to be _cold_ when he gets out of there, and she has a feeling a hot pot of tea might be in order. And a warm bed, for good measure, but perhaps there’s no need to rush.

“I’m watching!” she calls back, and feels silly over this flock of butterflies that is taking up residence in her stomach, and is faintly impressed by how quickly he surges through the water, his long legs carrying him through the shallows until he is waist-deep in the dark waves but not so far out that she might worry, and this is a mess, this is _such_ a mess, but it might turn out okay.

“ _Dammit, Jack_ ,” she whispers, feeling dangerously fond.

Until he dives beneath the water, and doesn’t come up again.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hisses, jumping to her feet. _Shit, no—not again!_ “Jack! _Jack,_ you fool, if this is a joke, I swear to god I will _harm_ you!”

There’s no sign of him. No splashing, no movement, nothing at all and _goddammit_ why did he convince her to leave her phone or to come out here at night or fucking anything, how dare he do this to her only the day after she nearly lost her _sister_ —

“Jack, get back out here right this instant, you awful prankster or I swear to god, Jack, I _swear_ I’ll—”

She’s already taking off her jacket. Her feet are suddenly bare on the thousands of large smooth stones of the beach and her hands are shaking and the chill of the night breeze is cool against the skin of her chest, her shoulders, her back when she pulls off her shirt, as she starts to—

“Are you _kidding_ me?”

Jack has burst above the surface not more than ten yards away, whipping his hair out of his eyes and delightedly shaking the water away like a dog might, shoulders barely visible over the water but fists raised in some unknown victory and mouth gleaming with a grin… at least until he looks over and sees Elsa standing akimbo in nothing but jeans and a bra. She is more annoyed than anything else—thinks she could kill him simply for the scare alone—but Jack is gaping, silent and focused and maybe even a little bit humbled, because Elsa’s certain that in her eyes is a look that could kill.

“If I get pneumonia,” she says, and she only half-means it, because the water temperature of Cape Cod in August is as favorable as it’s ever gonna get, “it will be your fault.” And then her jeans drop to the rocks at her feet.

Jack says nothing, and Elsa treads into the shallows like it’s what she’d planning to do all along. It’s really not _warm_ , but it’s not exactly cold either, and now that she’s actually in it’s not nearly as terrible of a possibility as it might have seemed even ten minutes ago. The waves lap up at her calves, and then her thighs, greeting her and welcoming her in, and that last push beneath the surface is the most difficult, save for the push needed to start in the first place— _it always is_ —and then her core is covered and then so is her chest and neck. Down goes her hair into the water, her braid, until she’s whipping her face back up to the starlight, and she laughs again, sharp and loud and goddammit, this is actually a lot more wonderful than she might have realized.

“If you’d told me an hour ago that I would be out here, I wouldn’t have believed you,” she tells him, and wades closer to where he’s staying put—because apparently he’s just as astounded by her presence out here on the water as she is. “Can you touch the bottom?” she asks curiously, because with his height he might, but she no longer can.

Jack’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “I could,” he tells her. He’s watching her like he doesn’t know what she’s going to do. In his defense—she doesn’t really know either, at this point, but it’s a nice feeling, strangely enough. If he’d be okay with it, she would gladly pick up right where they left off on the beach. “I thought… you don’t like to swim.”

 _Oh,_ thinks Elsa. _Is that where this concern is coming from?_ She inches closer, until they are just a stretch of an arm away. _He’s so nervous_ , she sees, and her stomach flutters for him, for the fact that—for as unusual as this is for Elsa, it’s probably just as confusing and surprising for Jack.

“There are exceptions,” she whispers, and hopes that he’ll be able to read the emotion through the words.

His eyes glaze over, and Elsa knows the feeling, and then she leans forward over the dark, gentle waves to press her lips to his. Her arms tread water easily, her heart pumping blood loud and fast and hard all throughout her body, the adrenaline and—

“Sorry,” she laughs, and pulls back slightly, giggling breathlessly at her own squeamishness. His eyes are heavily hooded, but his gaze is so strong. It’s even stronger than it was on the beach.

“What’s so funny?” he asks quietly, for the second time that night, eyes so curious and intense and with such a gleam. He’s grinning at her—at the whole night, probably—like he can’t believe that he’s exactly where he wants to be, like he’s surprised it’s so easy— _she knows, she knows, because it’s easier than she thought, too_ —and when she forgets to answer his question and just grins at him, he just cradles her face in his hands. _The ground must be close enough for him to stand, after all_ , she thinks.

“My foot must have brushed up against a fish or something,” she admits a tad sheepishly, and carefully places both her hands around his neck, braces her arms against his chest. He supports her easily, and eventually Elsa stops kicking, just lets Jack support her and the waves lap at her and the moonlight shine. What a goddamn night. “I’m not too bothered by it.”

Jack lowers his forehead to hers, presses his grin just shy of her lips. “That’s—a good thing,” he murmurs. “But—I got distracted, again.”

“Isn’t that…” she whispers, and cherishes the way his breath hitches in his chest when Elsa runs one hand down the front, down the the panes of the abs she had only barely had the chance to explore as they lay along the beach. _He’s much stronger than he looks_. “Isn’t that… a good thing?”

He opens his mouth to answer, and then Elsa’s fingers find his hips.

 

//

 


	8. as gently as possible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _11/14/16_. Hoping that:  
>  (1) this story will end in a nice, tidy ten chapters  
> (2) I can finish this story by the end of the month!
> 
> (Shout out to **SOCKS** for reading this over beforehand and giving it some quick beta love!)
> 
> [tumblr](http://therentyoupay.tumblr.com/)♡

 

 

//

 

Her name follows her. It stretches out after her like an invisible breeze, striking her softly and sharply in the back of the neck, her shoulders, her spine. Elsa sends a surge of power to her legs, forced them to carry her farther and faster and away. 

When the slip of a wet sneaker over a too-large rock sends her stumbling astray, a sharp noise tears itself from her throat, but she keeps going. She focuses on the fluorescent lights inside the research center and the nearing fence and _don’t trip, don’t fall, don’t don’t don’t don’t—_

Her limbs are awkward and flailing as she half-climbs, half-throws herself over the short barrier fence that separates the rocky beach from the docks. The voice calling her name is still shouting after her, and she doesn’t dare turn back to check, but it sounds closer. 

By now her eyes are well-adjusted to the dark, and her wet sneakers manage far better over the dry wood than they had over thousands of shifting, slippery smooth stones. But she is still distracted by the heartbeat pounding in her ears, the urgency with which her feet want to spring her up the stairs—it leads to mistakes and missteps, missed steps. Elsa ignores the shooting, shining pain that sparks through her throbbing shin, clutches onto the railing, and hauls herself to her feet. She takes another wild gulp of air; _keys_ , she thought. _My keys._

The stairs end. The voice is far enough away to let Elsa keep her head, but close enough that panic rips ragged edges through her breaths. She reaches for the porch door handle with grappling fingers, and throws herself into the enclosed space, bursting toward the many backrooms and offices.

She is panting by the time she reached the office where she’d let herself leave her keys and wallet and phone, but when she reaches the desk—

The bin is gone.

Wide eyes stare in disbelief. “No,” she whispers, as her fingers began to tremble. She doesn’t have _time_. “No, no no no no no, come on,” she hisses, darting her keen gaze toward every nook and cranny of the office— “Come on, you _have_ to be here somewhere.”

If they’d left her items in the bin in this exact spot, and they aren’t here now, then that could only mean—?

“Jack? You back?”

Elsa’s tremulous gaze locks with Jamie’s the moment he walks into the room. He is trailed by Pippa, but Elsa already has too many things to be angry about. 

Jamie comes to a halt just barely past the doorway. He takes in the sight of Elsa, drenched and dangerous in his meager office space, looking at him with the eyes of a wild animal, of a caged beast whose lost sight of her key. 

“Oh,” Jamie’s eyes widen. “Shit.”

 

// 

 

“Elsa, _please_ , just—hold on a minute!”

She is already at the reception desk in the front lobby. Jamie hadn’t tried to block her path, but he’d certainly tried to get her to slow down. _So_ _stupid_ , she thinks, inspecting every corner of the counters. Papers lose their places, cups filled with pens are knocked aside. So stupid. _All of it_. Every single one of them. And her, for ever thinking, for even _one_ second—

“Elsa, hold on—we should _talk_ about this! Where’s Jack? What _happened?_ ”

She takes the binder currently in her hands and all but slams it to the counter, pinning him with a desperate, disastrous glare. “Jamie Bennet,” she enunciates, slow and deliberate, “I would greatly appreciate it if you would return to me my things.”

Jamie flounders, staring at her with an open mouth and a whirlwind brain, when Pippa, who had been leaning casually against the doorway separating the reception area and the back offices, tilts her head back and observes the state of the backrooms with impassive eyes.

“Incoming,” she drones.

Elsa twists her body so that the counter is hard against her lower back, with both hands gripping tightly to the edge behind her. Pippa moves barely a foot to the side to make way for the abrupt, noisy arrival of someone who looks exactly like a wild, speechless version of a boy Elsa thought she had come to know over the last few days. He has silver-light hair and pale skin and wide blue eyes and two legs.

And he is sopping wet, like her. His dry clothes are no longer dry, but instead they stick and cling to the salt and sea on his skin, the same way hers do. She hates it. 

“Okay, wait—just wait a minute—” Jamie holds up his hands as Jack lurches into the space, and one of his hands catches Jack’s chest as he tries to surge forward, blue eyes abound with questions and explanations and a bright-eyed sort of panic that is painted and cracked all over his face. Jack’s eyes lock onto Elsa’s, mouth agape and brows sharply drawn. To her incredible surprise, he looks incredibly disappointed in _her_.

“You _tricked_ me!” she all but snarls—it comes out before she can stop it, both hands gripping tightly to the edge of the counter behind her. Jack tries to surge forward, eyes hurt, a garbled string of half-words leaving his mouth while his hands flex and fly through the air in front of him, but Jamie’s hand catches him again, pressing him back. Jamie is a half a foot shorter than Jack, but Jamie’s hand stays him, and finally Elsa realizes that Jamie is speaking to her, finally she drags her eyes from blue to brown, to words that she is supposed to understand.

“—a shock, but I promise, you’re not in any danger, okay? In fact, you’re probably in the safest spot on the whole east coast right now, to be honest, and once we, like, take it down a few notches we can totally answer any questions you have, okay? Um. We know this is a lot, but it’s—”

“My keys,” Elsa repeats, even and icy. 

“You won’t even hear—my story!” Jack blurts, and Jamie is forced to press his hand once more. Jack’s legs are unsteady. His arms flail, his words fail, and his eyes narrow. “I didn’t even—chance to—explain!”

"Jack," says Jamie carefully, but it’s a struggle, like tripping over eggshells. "You didn't just… _drop_ this… did you?”

"Oh, he totally did,” Pippa scoffs from the doorframe behind them. "Look at that face. Dude—why you gotta be so impatient? So impulsive?"

"You two—did not react—like this!”

Elsa is about to spit fire or ice or both, but Pippa cuts her off: "Jack. Come on, man. Jamie was with me _the whole time—_ and you know Jamie didn’t flip out in a bad way because he’s been looking for signs of mermaid existence his whole damn life!"

"I hate that word!” Jack’s broken bitterness fills the room, and Elsa’s stomach completes another full-scale flip. Her head fills with ice-cold confirmation, sharp and expanding and painful. Jack is more upset than she’s ever seen him— _so_ angry, and Elsa is so angry, and so flabbergasted, and— "It does not—tell who we are!"

“Jack, dude, this _so_ is not the time to get up in arms about semantics,” Pippa groans.

“Look, Jack, man—we know better now, but there's only so much we can do, okay? Just, like—hold on a minute? We need to, um, figure this out.“

Elsa is still gripping awkwardly onto the counter, clothes clinging. She needs her car keys.

“So. Many. _Stories!_ ” Jack argues. His voice is growing louder, less controlled. Elsa’s hands tighten over the ledge, and she faces down the whole pack of lies and secrets and _absurdity_ with everything she has. ”Why share so—many stories! What is the point of sharing tales if—no one believes! If the stories are _wrong!_ "

"Dude, we get it, we hear you, okay? Come on, man, look," Jamie is using the voice of a skilled pacifier, and Elsa is more than a little rankled that someone is presuming to use such diplomacy on _her_. "Why don't I, like, brew a pot of coffee or something. Okay? Jack? How ‘bout the weird tea you like? Elsa, you like tea, right?”

It’s time to stand her ground.

"Thank you," she allows, not without great effort. “But I should be going. I need... to think." Her eyes dart to Jack, who still looks so betrayed it's ridiculous.

"Elsa, wait—" (And _oh_ , Jamie is _trying_ , Jamie is a true friend, Jamie is loyal and determined and hopeful, but Elsa has _not_ signed up for this.) "Look, we know what this looks like, we know how it feels—"

Elsa seriously doubts that.

"—we know it's not easy, okay? Just stay a little while, we'll give you answers to any questions we can."

"And by that, we also mean: 'any answers we can trust you to keep to yourself'," Pippa clarifies with a firmness that is quite respectable—or would be, if Elsa's walls were not already built so high.

She steels herself.

"You think I’d reveal something like this?" Elsa inquires, and her voice is calm civility, her power is diplomacy, but she lets just enough of the chill seep into her voice to make herself clear; she is not going to stand here and tolerate accusations from these people, no matter how founded they are in concern for a friend. She has her own family to look out for, too.

Jack had at first seemed delightedly surprised by Pippa's outright protectiveness, but his face loses that spark just as quickly. She can feel him staring at her, feel him watching tension grow between the matching glares between two people that are presumably of some significance to him, between Pippa at the door and Elsa at the ledge. it’s becoming decidedly colder in the research center, and Elsa is only getting warmed up. 

Once more, Jamie steps in to try to de-escalate the situation.

"Elsa, look—you can leave as soon as we explain, okay? There's too much we should tell you, so just let me make us something in the kitchen real quick and we can sit down and talk about this, and then you can grab your car keys and—“

"No," says Jack, miserably. She ignores the pang in her chest as Jack looks to the floor, looks to the ceiling, looks to her, and says, "If you want to leave, you should… not be made to stay."

"But... Jack,” Pippa begins, “what about—"

"I trusted—enough, to share," he says, haltingly. His eyes are very disappointed."I trust enough—that you will not."

Elsa's voice is hard, even if her gaze is something softer."Of course not."

It's so clear that this is not how he expected things to go at all, and the disappointment and devastation on his face is _almost_ enough to change her mind.

But this is not what Elsa needs. 

_This isn't fair_ , Elsa finds herself wanting to say. They're all standing around, mixed up in shock and feelings and disappointment and confusion; they can't possibly expect her to accept this outright.

"I need time," she says to the room, but she's looking at Jack. She hopes he remembers enough from the other night on the beach to know what she means.

Pippa goes to the back and retrieves her things, and Elsa purposefully does not look at anyone but her; Pippa is the only one who will look at her levelly, with expectation beyond disappointment. She finds a bizarre sort of validation in Pippa's quiet anger, in her silent mistrust. She feels deserving of it, she realizes, as cold metal meets the flesh of her palm.

And then she leaves.

 

//

 

She only makes it as far as opening the car door when Jamie comes rushing out after her. She's sliding into the seat when he reaches the driver's side.

"I'm not going to try to get you to stay," he pants, because Elsa has locked the doors as if he just might give it a shot. The rolled-down car window is the only opening for him now, and even through that he is forced to fight against the sound of Anna's too loud stereo and Elsa's dwindling patience.

"I'm not going to betray his secret," Elsa reminds coolly. Her gaze slides down his body, then back to his face, sizing him up. ”Nor _yours_ , for that matter."

"No, it's not that, it’s—forgive Pippa, okay? She's been through a lot with this too, and it sort of took a bit for her to come around. Like, of course she's acting this way because we care about him and he's our friend, but I think—I think part of this is because she still feels guilty for not believing before."

Elsa's gut crawls. "There are many things in this world that should enable guilt,” she states evenly, coolly, though her throat is tight. “This disbelief is not one of them.”

"No," he shakes his head, "no, I know. It's just—I mean that she's seen what happens to Jack when others _do_ accept his existence right away, and she knows now how—how hard it is for him when humans he cares about don't... well, when they don't react the way he'd hoped." Jamie's eyes take on an interestingly quality. "And I think he's really had high hopes with you."

Elsa ignores this. "Your acceptance isn’t exactly what I’d imagine to be the _typical_ reaction, if indeed there is one,” she argues instead. "He has to know this. We aren't supposed to—there has never been any reason to—" Elsa lets her thoughts die off, unfinished, where they float in the awkward, effortful place between them. The car's engine is still running, and ready. "He can't expect all of us to react to finding out what—whatever he is the way _you_ have, when you've spent so much time wishing to find something like what he is. Not everyone believes as you do.”

"I know. But I wasn't talking about me, or my reaction. I was talking about your sister."

 

//

 

"Get in."

 

//

 

It's at least five minutes on the phone with Pippa before Jamie is able to convince her that Elsa is not conducting an impromptu kidnapping. Or dolphin researcher-napping. She could really use some sleep, for that matter.

But that's not on the agenda for tonight.

"Well," says Elsa, hands gripping the steering wheel tight enough so that they don't shake. After a quick glance at Jamie, she sees that his own hands are not in much better shape. "Since you're so keen on tea..."

The diner they pull into is not particularly close to the beach, or to downtown, or to the condo she is renting. It's at least two miles away from the research center, and it's open until 2AM. They have a little over four hours.

She imagines it will be enough time.

Elsa strides in towards a booth table in the back corner like she owns it, and Jamie tentatively follows suit. She's struck by the stray thought that he's actually rather brave.

"I don't have my wallet with me," he winces, looking her in the eye. "I didn't really, uh... I didn't think to grab it on my way out."

Elsa waves a dismissing hand and pulls out a few bills, and when his expression turns guilty and uncomfortable, she stares until he acquiesces. 

She does not mention a thing—not a word—until the cheerful waitress has taken both of their orders— _cup of hot tea each, black_ —and they're placed in front of them— _chipped saucers and tiny spoons and a little tray of cream and sugar, in case they changed their minds_ —and then she looks him in the eye. It is more satisfying than it should be, to see him so nervous. It helps her control herself.

"If you would be so kind as to explain to me," she begins, "what you meant when you happened to mention the part about my sister being drawn into this predicament?"

Jamie is silent. He appears to be choosing his words carefully. Good.

"Your sister found about about Jack's... study abroad program about a day or two ago."

"Go on."

"Jack asked her to keep it a secret, and she promised she would. At least, you know, until he could work up the nerve to tell you, himself. He wasn't exactly planning to reveal the... nature of who he is. Not to Anna, anyway, but... other forces... well. Forced his hand."

Her eyes narrow. "What kinds of forces?"

"Um... Mother Nature? Wait, no—Jack doesn't like it when I say her name for stuff. Um. Okay, I'm trying to keep the the euphemisms and metaphors here for the sake of privacy—"

"Just say it."

Jamie is about to, but Elsa doesn’t gives him the chance.

It clicks.

"Are... are you joking?"

“I—?”

"Are you telling me—that _Jack_ was the reason she ended up in that alcove?"

"Well, the current does often naturally find that space," Jamie admits, as Elsa’s stomach drops, ”but Jack made sure she was out of the water before asphyxiation had a chance to cause any lasting brain damage."

Elsa lowers her forehead to the sticky table.

"But like—Jack doesn't know about that stuff. He’d known before meeting us that, like, humans will drown if kept under water too long, but he still doesn't know _how long_ or what could happen. He just... knew that he had to move fast."

Elsa dares not open her eyes. Even if the only thing she will see is the floor, and her shoes. Her legs.

"How fast?"

Jamie does not answer right away.

"Fast,” is all he can say.

 

//

 

The waitress has stopped asking them if they’d like another round. At this point, she just shows up with the carafe and pours it into the mugs. She doesn’t seem all that perturbed by the way Jamie and Elsa suddenly halt all conversation when she arrives, or how they remain resolutely silent until she leaves. Jamie is on his second cup of coffee. Elsa is only a few sips through her first, although she, of all people, really shouldn’t be drinking it at all. 

“How do you do it?” she asks, at last, head in her hands. She stares into her cooling cup. Pushes the cup almost to the edge of the table, away.

“Do what?”

“How do you let yourself believe it?”

“Didn’t you see it?”

_Felt it,_ more like. “That doesn’t mean that I believe it.”

“You must, though,” Jamie reasons, “Enough, at least. Or else you wouldn’t be here right now.”

Elsa bites her cheek. “True…” she concedes. “It’s more that I don’t want to believe it. How do you let yourself be okay with this? How do you accept that someone in your life isn’t… _human?_ That… that magic is—that magic is—“

“Real?”

Elsa wishes she’d stuck to tea. Safe. Familiar. Reliable. Calming. “Maybe,” she sighs. “Is that what they call it?” _Magic?_

“It’s what Jack calls it,” Jamie admits. “But I also don’t know if that’s a translation thing or not. Aster is much more used to English, so he would probably be more precise about it.”

Elsa might very well chew a hole through her cheek tonight if she’s not careful. 

“Aster is…?”

“One of the Guardians,” Jamie answers, watching her face carefully. Elsa makes sure to keep her expression neutral. “Like Jack.”

She nods, because she’s not quite prepared to say anything else. There is a tiny ball of feeling worming its way into her chest. It almost feels like regret.

Elsa pushes it down. “Does Aster know that one of his own has been revealing himself to so many humans? That he planned to add me to the pile?”

“Well… I guess each of them have a few trusted humans on each continent who know of their existence,” Jamie answers, slowly and thoughtfully, but with the same ease as if it were any old inquiry about the weather, or his thesis paper, or how he liked his coffee. It infuriates her, even if she can’t pinpoint why. “They’ll keep tabs on them, and check in with them, and ask them for help when they need it. They’re friends.”

Elsa’s eyes meet his under heavy, skeptical lids. “They keep tabs on their humans?” 

“They’re Guardians. They protect them.”

Her lips pull into a frown. “From what?”

“That is… sort of a harder question to answer.”

Elsa grabs hold of her discarded mug with both hands, raises it high to her lips. She’s listening.

 

//

 

By midnight, Elsa doesn't know _what_ to think.

 

//

 

Jamie, Elsa decides, is not a terrible dining buddy.

Granted, he’s practically half-buried under empty sugar packets by now (there are stains from spills all over the space of the table in front of him, and there’s something oddly manic about the cowlick that has appeared at the back of his head), but he’s sat for hours in the same booth and answered her questions and told her about his life, and his work, and his dreams. Elsa supposes that there are just some things in life that you can’t come out of without really getting to know someone better.A week ago, Elsa wouldn’t have considered sand castle-building on the beach to be one of them. She’s still not sure she does. But an out-of-the-way diner past midnight on a night filled with magic and discovery? Well. Sure. Maybe. 

_What do you think he’s doing right now?_ She wants to ask Jamie. _What did he do, as soon as we left?_

“What are you thinking about?” Jamie asks. The fact that he expects her to respond to such a deeply vulnerable question is either a testament to his stupid bravery, or to the fact that three hours sitting alone with her in a diner booth have made him presumptuously comfortable with their dynamic. It’s a testament to her exhaustion, or maybe her uncertainty, that she responds. 

“Do you think he’d… Do you think he understands,” she wonders delicately, “why it’s so hard for us to… ”

“To what?”

Elsa shakes her head. “No. I appreciate your help, but... I've already asked all the questions I can ask of you. I need to talk to him.”

Jamie nods his head, vigorously, but at her sharp look he calms his eagerness and takes a bracing sip of his coffee. “Yes. Yes, I—yes.”

She runs a hand through her bangs. Her hair must be such a mess. A sigh escapes her at the thought of why, exactly, there might still be some sand trapped in the strands. At least she’d taken a quick break from their conversation to change into one of the spare sweatshirts Kristoff kept in her car’s trunk. She doesn’t think he’d mind, given the circumstances. Her jeans are pretty much a lost cause at this point, but she’s never been one to get sick from the cold. She just has to hope for the best. 

Jamie is still waiting for her to say something. 

“I need to go home and change,” Elsa begins, with careful clarity. “I am going to drive back to the Dolphin Research Center, drop you off out front. I am going to drive back to my condo, take a shower, and change into warm, dry clothes. I will not be sleeping for quite some time. If you would be so kind… I would appreciate it, greatly, if you might have the opportunity to drive Jack to my condo sometime later tonight, whenever you have the chance to do so.”

He blinks at her, too many times for comfort. Is that the coffee at work, or the dawning realization of what she’s saying?

“Please don’t make me change my mind,” she sighs, warningly, even though it’s a moot point.

She’s not going to change her mind.

 

//

 

The next hour is not necessarily what she’d thought it be: a warm drive, a warm shower, a warm set of dry clothes. A hot cup of herbal tea. A few text messages to a curious Anna, a few _yes, I’m fine, was with Jamie and Jack at the Research Center, don’t worry, I am back now, I am turning in for an early night, stay out and dance and don’t worry about me_. A few too many minutes staring out the windows of sliding doors at the blackness of the sea beyond, sipping on her too hot tea, and wondering. 

Jamie texts her just before 2AM, because now they have each other’s numbers. It’s an unexpected sign of camaraderie, and she’s not wholly convinced that it’s entirely welcome, but it’s too late to revoke it now. 

_Hey,_ he says, _you have a visitor on your doorstep. I would have left him in a basket, but I figured you’d had enough surprises for one evening_. 

The problem with exchanging numbers after three hours in a run-down diner and a life-altering revelation, you see, is that people _do_ start to think of each other as friends. They make jokes. They make _jokes_.

Before she can think much more about it, she unlatches the lock with one hand and holds her tea mug in the other, and opens the front door. At the bottom of the long, narrow steps, in the light of street lamps and and the porch light from the front wall of the complex, is Jack. 

The familiarity of him is betrayed by the sense that she’s looking at a stranger. It’s hard to reconcile the man at the bottom of her stairs with the person she spent the better part of the night kissing on her back in the sand. 

It’s a few moments before either of them can collect themselves. Elsa swallows the _hi_ on her lips, and instead tilts her head toward the warmth of the condo inside. “Come in.”

She doesn’t wait for him to climb the stairs, instead turns her back and enters the kitchen before he can read the uncertainty on her face. She keeps sipping her tea, but soon she’s going to run out, and then what armor of distraction will she have against the awkwardness? Best to boil another pot. Who knows, maybe he’ll even want some, she should be a respectable hostess, they should—

“I’m sorry.”

Elsa watches the flames flicker to life on the back burner, one second, two, maybe three, and then she turns back around to regard the young man standing in her kitchen. He’s changed into dry clothes as well. She’s not sure if it helps, to see him back in blue. 

“I—Pippa told me,” his words plow forward, even though his feet are rooted to the space just beyond the entry to the kitchen. “That what I did was—pretty stupid.”

There are… so many ways to respond to this. Elsa presses her lips together, holds his gaze once she finds it. She chooses one. 

“Jamie told me,” she says, with the tone of someone who wishes to correct another, as gently as possible. She turns her shallow breaths into deeper pools. “What you did for Anna.”

He told her about the rest of the Guardians, too, and what they do, and who they protect, and how they try, and ( _who they fight, and_ ) why—but Elsa isn't so sure she cares about any of that, at the moment. It's too bizarre, besides, on top of everything else, and it's really not the thing that's most important to  _her_. 

Jack eyes her uncertainly.  Her arms cross over her chest, waiting for the tea kettle to boil. There is not much else to hold onto in the meantime. 

“I’d like to thank you," she insists, undeterred from the tangle of tension hanging over them. “Putting, for the moment, my behaviors tonight aside… It's not the first time that you've used your... skills to retrieve something that's important to my family, but this time was… all the more precious." He keeps staring at her like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. She supposes she can’t blame him. She sighs and ignores the inadequacy of the statement, "You know how much she means to me."

"Yeah... I know."

Silence reigns through the kitchen. It's hard to remember that they were here together only a day or so before, stirring orzo on the stovetop… she thinks of all the time he’s spent in her kitchen staring curiously into her oven, or double-checking her fridge to examine its contents, or running his fingers along the corners of everything: from the hard edges of Kristoff's cardboard cereal boxes to the rims and stems of Anna's traveling set of fine plastic wine glasses, or the crisp binding of Elsa's newest book, which is still sitting on the kitchen table, remarkably untouched and unread and forgotten in the wake of. Well. Everything else.

All this time, and she's been harboring a mermaid.

_(And Anna knew_ , Elsa can’t help but think, sinking. It’s a small, stray thought—it’s crept in every so often over the last few hours, in between the rest of the mess, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t shake the unsetting feeling that—)

"I—make you uncomfortable."

Elsa looks up, startled by his voice. His attempt at nonchalance is overshadowed by the tumult of emotion lurking beneath the carefully curved mask of his rather weak smile. Elsa’s chest spasms.

So Elsa does not confirm nor deny; she's not entirely sure what's the truth. "I'm always at least a little uncomfortable."

But Jack's frown does not ease. “I—scared you,” he croaks.

Elsa bites her lip and looks for words. She’s not going to lie, but there is a time and a place and a manner for everything, and the whole point of this disaster is that Jack clearly has very little understanding of how those three frameworks fit together, so. Maybe it’s time for some modeling of appropriate behavior? 

“You shocked me,” she clarifies, trying to keep her gaze focused on his, but his eyes flit away often, and back, and away, like they are chasing thousands of scattered thoughts. She waits for him to work his gaze back to hers before she continues. “I was surprised and confused, yes, but beyond that, I felt deceived,” she sighs, tries to ignore how her heart snags at the sight at wide blue pools of misery, so full of excuses and explanations and apologies. “I don’t think you did, now, for the record. It’s been a.. very informative few hours. It’s funny what some distance can do.”

Jack’s face is so pale, so drawn. “Is that why you ran?”

Her chest tightens. “Part of it, I suppose,” she answers honestly. “To clear my head. Part of it was to get away, to see if things started making more sense.”

“Did it?”

Elsa hesitates. “Jamie helped.” Then, because the air has gotten decidedly thick, she gingerly hoists the tea kettle off the stovetop, kills the flame, and pours the hot water into the two cups just beforethe water actually comes to a boil. Unimportant. The tea will just steep for longer, that’s all. 

“Yeah,” comes Jack’s thoughtful voice. “He does.”

It sits in the air funny, somewhere between a commendation and a not-quite-accusation and a simple sigh of disappointment, truth and fact and _it is what it is_ , which, really—still isn’t everything. The tea kettle rests back onto the stovetop with a small clink of metal on metal, and Elsa is back in the same awkward square where she started, except now she feels more grounded.

“I was shocked,” she repeats, a bit stronger, “and confused, because I’ve never encountered anything like what you are before, clearly, in anything other than stories. And scared, yes,” she says, not hiding from Jack’s sullen, pinning gaze, “because the stories I _have_ heard do not always take kindly to interpretations of the motives for bringing humans into the deep.”

Jack’s eyes widen so fiercely she can almost see white all the way around the blue. “I would _never_ —“

“And part of me knew that, yes,” Elsa does not allow him to defend himself, because it isn’t necessary. “Even then, out in the water. I knew, before and after and during, that you weren’t going to hurt me. Intentionally.”

“Elsa. If I’d—realized—“

“But the real reason I ran was because I felt I’d been tricked,” she tells him, and his mouth clicks shut. “Like you used my trust to get what you wanted, and you enjoyed yourself for a while, while I was in the dark, and only then—when my guard was down—did you show me the truth. Because you thought, by that point, I was in too deep to escape.”

Jack blinks at her, astounded. His chest moves rapidly with the force of his breaths. It’s hard to look at him. 

“That’s not… That’s not it at all.”

Elsa stares down at the half-finished tea cups. They probably don’t even taste good. It probably isn’t even worth it to offer one to him.

“Would it—have changed? Your—reaction?” If you’d known? Earlier?”

It’s hard to hear him talking like this again. She hadn’t realized how smooth his speech had become over the last few days…

“Maybe,” Elsa allows, unwilling to speak in absolutes if she did not have them. “Because for me to be... so close to someone, it’s at least partially because I like to think I know who they are, and what they stand for.” She frowns at him, brows furrowed, _no pun intended_ , whether or not he caught her slip of tongue at all. “If you’d told me before… I might have been too preoccupied with what I’d learned, to act on any of my other feelings—”

“Feelings?”

“—but at least I’d have _known_. My trust might not have been so badly shaken.”

Jack’s face doesn’t have an ounce of color to it. It’s starting to worry her. “I didn’t want that,” he says, quietly. “I want your trust.”

“My belief, you mean?” 

“To me… they are the same.”

Elsa shakes her head. Then, slowly, “I don't know if I agree.”

She shifts her weight as she remembers the cold, stomach-churning shock of recognizing that _what_ had brushed against her bare calf in the darkness of the waves was actually more of a who. That it was an actual, physical _part of him_. Remembers the look on his face as she kicked back against the tide, gasping, the noise that pulled from her throat as he reached out to her— _confused_ —but she was already scraping the balls of her feet along the bottom and desperately back-pedaling towards the shallows. The look on his face at _her_ face when her bare feet found a floor of sand, and she took off.

Elsa resists another wave of shivers. What has she said so far this evening? Has she actually explained how she felt, in that moment? Shocked, confused, scared, betrayed, _tricked_ : it’s all true, and out in the open on the kitchen table between them, waiting for Jack to pick them up and turn them over. But, as ever, there seems to be more to Jack’s thoughts than what he’s said aloud.

Whatever he’s done to make her feel the way she felt, or however Elsa might have appeared to him at the moment when she learned the beginning of the truth… something about this night, and her reaction, has challenged the way Jack sees himself. What he is.

That’s not really what Elsa wants.

“I should have found—a better way,” he swallows. “To show you. It would have been—less painful.”

At length, she concedes, ”Perhaps… If you had warned me first, I might have been more prepared. Or maybe I might have thought you were playing games, like some awful prank. I might have been less insulted if you’d shared the truth before… whatever it is that happened on the beach. But then, perhaps I still wouldn’t have believed you. I might have left even earlier, before you’d had the chance to provide any... evidence. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. I can guess, but I’m not sure if that answer is any more desirable.”

Jack’s whole countenance is crestfallen, and she hates what it does to her stomach, to watch his new or remaining piece of hope crumble.

"I'm sorry if my honesty upsets you," Elsa offers gently, as her chest tightens and constricts. Jack shakes his head.

"You are—as honest as you can," Jack states. It's such a quiet conviction, and so tired. He must be even more exhausted than she is… and yet there’s an underlying certainty to his existence, even amidst all the doubt—it's moments like these that remind Elsa of her week’s worth of suspicions, of her earlier reasons to guard her trust. That there is more to Jack than meets the eye, even if… she could never have guessed the truth. 

"Do you think I have any reason to lie?"

"No," says Jack, quickly, stepping further into the kitchen at last. He stands directly behind the chair at the end of the table, and places both of his hands over the wood. His expression is dull, his movements sing of bone-tiredness. She glances to his hands curling over the wood, wondering how much… energy, it must take, for him to become what he’s become. The table separates them, and Elsa cannot tell if she is grateful. “You are only as honest as—your words let you be. Your language is limiting. These words—they can be full or empty. Cold or warm."

Elsa considers this. She resists the burn of curiosity that flows through her when she asks, ”How do they feel, then?"

Jack only stares at her, unblinking.

"I don't know."

Elsa hides her sudden flare of dissatisfaction with an understanding nod. How could she expect him to describe her feelings this evening if even she could not describe them, herself? How many time has someone told her that her face and words and tone are unfriendly, unfeeling, unreadable?  Old habits die hard,apparently. And how funny, isn't it, that one of the few people in the world who is willing enough to try to figure it out, ends up abandoned in the dark and chasing after her down the shore?

_Old habits, indeed_ , Elsa frowns.

She takes a few moments to dump the water remaining inside the tea kettle into the sink and place it gently back onto the stovetop, mustering up the courage she hadn’t realized she’d need. 

"Is your..." _Family? Brethren? School?_   "Do your people know that you've shared your secret?"

Jack's demeanor takes on an even gloomier overcast. "They have warned me not to."

Elsa's heart beats stupidly fast in her chest. "But do they know?"

Jack runs a hand along the ridge of the back of the chair. How long must it have taken before he was able to feel wooden grain beneath his fingers? Or metal handles, or plastic cellphones, or her sister's breathless body sinking beneath the waves?

"I'm sorry I made your decision harder,” she announces. “To share your secret with me. I’m sorry that I… that my reaction was not ideal. I can't say for certain what my reaction would have been, had I discovered your secret any other way, but I'd like to believe that my... threshold for surprise is much higher now."

Jack’s head tilts to the side. The familiarity of the gesture hurts in a very unexpected way. Elsa does not let herself get lost in memories of the previous week, in the small quirks and her appreciation of them that led her to this moment in the first place. ”What is ' _threshold_ '?"

"By that I mean..." What does she mean? "My tolerance. My academic standards for science," she sighs. "My… acceptance of the unknown. My suspension of disbelief."

Jack watches her very carefully. "And do you believe?" he whispers.

She pauses. "I didn't think I would," Elsa admits, "but I'd like to."

_I'm starting to_.

Elsa is surprised to find that Jack has taken a few steps closer. They are almost toe-to-toe. She wonders of divulging ancient mystical secrets with humans automatically dissolves some unspoken agreement of personal space. 

"What would you need?" he breathes, and waits for words to hang onto—no matter how useless or limited or cold or whatever he claims they can be.

_Time_ , thinks Elsa. But she's already asked for that, and it's something he can't give; she just has to ride it out, let it find her. _A drink_ , thinks Elsa, but that's rather more like Eugene's voice, so she ignores that one.

"Could I... would it be... inappropriate," she hesitates, "if I were to ask for a chance to improve my reaction?"

Jack's gaze darts from her eyes to her cheeks to her nose to her lips. He's reading messages that she does not recall sending.

"You—wanna see?" he breathes.

"If… if I may. If you would not—"

Her body is pulled forward by the tugging at her wrist, by the excited bundle of nerves that is the boy latched onto her hand. Elsa spares one more glance towards the two cups of tea that are left sitting, untouched, on the kitchen table.

In no time at all, Elsa is led to the bathroom at the end of the hall. 

 

//


	9. gracious, where the hell is a towel?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _12/30/17_. 
> 
>  
> 
> *quietly drops new, unbeta'd chapter update for the 'summertime fic' in the depths of winter, after over a year*  
> *disappears*

 

 

//

 

Elsa is standing in the bathroom, aghast.

Jack is taking off his clothes.

"I'll just," she starts, and by the time she turns around and faces the door, she decides the rest of the sentence isn't truly necessary. She focuses on keeping her expression blank and her heart calm, and her thoughts less and less on… whatever she's about to see.

"Have you—changed your mind?"

"No," Elsa protests defensively, feeling a stubborn surge bloom in her chest. Honestly. She gave him her word, didn’t she?

Yet when his hesitant silence persists, she realizes the real reason for his question; she hesitates, sighs, and relents. "No, I haven’t, I’m… I am just… giving you privacy.”

"Privacy," he repeats behind her, like he is committing the answer to memory. He probably is. Good.

"It's polite," Elsa finds herself explaining, "to not look at someone's body unless… special circumstances allow it."

"Like after transforming a tail?"

"Yes," she answers, mind swimming, “—after."

She can almost hear a smile in his voice. "Jamie gets very loud and red and covers his face a lot when I take—my time."

"Changing?"

"Yes. Both with clothes and with tails."

Wonderful.

A noise that sounds suspiciously like someone banging their elbow against a tile wall rings through the bathroom. ”It isn’t—“ he starts, stops, and blusters, “I will wait for water," and he turns on the tap to the tub as he says it. Now that his bravado and teasing lilt are gone, she can hear that his voice is the slightest bit frayed with nerves. Elsa’s stomach tumbles.

She swallows down whatever’s lodged in her throat, and forces herself to talk. "Do you need the water to…?” (To what?) "What about the sea? The… ah. Salt? Don’t you need it to…”

"I can—change anytime. But yes, the sea—it helps me focus. I am—still learning how to channel my—my. Uh."

"Magic?" she pales.

"Yes. My magic. The sea is where I live but it is also my staff."

“Your _crutch_?"

"Yes—it is the tool that helps me focus. For now. I am—trying to swim without it.”

Elsa glances to the floor beside her and spies a pile of familiar fabric on the ground by her feet. Apparently mercreatures have no need for the folding of t-shirts. But perhaps that could be said for plenty of ordinary humans as well?

She checks her hard-trained composure, and asks, casual as can be: ”And the removal of clothing?"

"Ruins too many—pants."

Indeed.

The bathroom is filled with the deafening stream of the tap. She can hear when the bath is half-full, almost full, when he turns the faucet off. Her ears still ring with it, or maybe that's just the blood.

"I am—going to... If I sit in the bath, will you run away?"

Such a peculiar question. Unfortunately she can't say that it's without its merit.

"No."

"Okay."

He sinks into the water without much noise. She wishes she could say that she can tell the precise moment that the transition begins, or the magic starts, but the truth is that her heartbeat is so loud she probably wouldn't even notice her own voice in the room.

"You can—you can see now."

A hold seizes Elsa's chest. _I can't do this—? This is ludicrous._

She sits herself onto the closed toilet seat lid, still facing the door.

"You said—you said you weren't gonna run."

Elsa wets her lips. "I'm not running."

"You are sitting. I’m not sure—that's better."

 _Fair enough_. Slowly, oh so slowly, Elsa peers over her shoulder.

What has she been expecting? Brightly-colored scales? A tail like something out of Anna’s fairy tales? A crown made of shells? What?

Her neck is cramping from twisting so tightly over her shoulder, but the rest of her body won’t move. Jack’s body has many of the same features she has come to recognize—blue eyes, pale pale skin, pale hair with that sad-happy moonlit brain, long fingers, a solid chest. The barely visible slits of gills above ( _what once were?_ ) his hips, however, are new.

As is the space below his abdomen, which transitions from the pale flesh of his stomach to a deep, resounding blue—the length of which can be found in the shape of a long, living, thriving, vibrant tail unlike anything she has ever seen before. It is dressed with flukes and fins and a deep gradient of ocean hues so subtle and so complex that it’s difficult to know where one shade ends and another begins. Unlike the hopes of fairy tales, she sees no glittering shine in his scales, if indeed he has any and _isn’t that a peculiar thought?_ and suddenly she needs a closer look.

Even through the once-fluffy bath rug, the tile is hard on her knees, but the ceramic edge of the tub is oddly warm beneath her hands. Jack shifts as she nears. The once-dry floor is no match for the little splashes falling past Jack's pale, slippery skin. She can't stop looking at the texture of it.

"Are you more like a fish? Or a dolphin?" Elsa peers closer.

“Neither? We are—we are our own.”

“Hmm. A shark?"

Jack recoils, aghast. "No way."

Surprised by his ferocity, and more amused than she’d like to admit, Elsa eyes him beneath her brow. "Glad to see you've been retaining so much slang."

"Jamie—uses a lot,” he stutters, and then clams up. Elsa considers him carefully.

“This is… remarkable,” she allows, racing to put her thoughts in order. “I—want you to know how much I appreciate it.”

But Jack doesn’t seem to care about that at the moment. “Do you—do you like it?”

“Like?” Elsa asks, unavoidably confused. “That this is your natural form? That this is who you are? That your tail is blue?”

Jack’s cheeks go pink. Elsa pretends not to notice. “All of it.”

What kind of answer can one give? “I do.”

Jack relaxes marginally after that, and then considerably so, and finally lets himself lean back against the tiled wall behind him. His tail is much too large for the tub, so as Elsa continues her investigation Jack amuses himself with splashing bathwater up onto his flukes. His tail twitches and shifts with every breath he takes, and Elsa tries not to dwell on how bizarre all of this is. A few of his splashes catch Elsa’s hair and cheeks, to which she takes the time to glare, but Jack is whole-heartedly unabashed. In fact, he is looking increasingly more pleased with himself with every passing minute. A sharp pang of guilt for her reaction on the beach stings through her chest. It tries to pull and stretch itself open, but Elsa drops it immediately; this is better, isn’t it?

“Can you breathe as easily above the water as in it?” she wonders.

“Yeah, for the—most part. The air tastes funnier when I am—like this, but it’s fine.”

She runs her eyes along his neck and shoulders, looking to see if there are any more unexpected features within sight. Is it rude to ask a merman to twist over so she can examine his gills? _Oh, the questions to which I have no answers._ Elsa wonders what kind of physical boundaries are customary between mercreatures themselves, particularly in Jack’s culture. Maybe she’ll ask him later. At present, the only gills she can see are the ones above where she would expect to find a pair of hip bones; they’re slashed along the bottom of what she assumes are still his oblique muscles. His neck and shoulders are presumably devoid of any such marks, although there is a special kind of shine that has lent itself to his skin as a whole and—wait.

 _Has his skin changed, too?_ she wonders. Upon further consideration, she confirms that there is a new quality about it: it is shinier, more wet-streamed—like it has become something intended for speed and slickness, for someone to tear through currents like a jet, to achieve agility and power and moving so very, very fast. With purpose.

If a lump is threatening to lodge itself in Elsa’s throat, well, that’s fine, then, isn’t it? The sudden well of inexplicable emotion could be from anything. It could be wonder rising up and taking hold, or gratitude: thick and fierce and so relieved that it feels hot in her throat. _Fast_ , she thinks, picturing the underbelly of the alcove, but not quite able to let herself imagine the rest.

And then another memory resurfaces. Her throat tightens at the sudden onslaught of saltwater and swollen lips and unexpected slickness and too-slippery skin against skin and the jarring sensation of _what just touched me, where did this come from, what is—?_

Elsa's hands itch and tighten where they hold against the ridge of the tub.

Jack, who has been merrily distracted by splashing himself with water, takes note. A lengthy pause of uncertainty, and then he leans forward, and Elsa resists the urge to do anything rash. He sees the new line of tension in her shoulders, in her stiff neck.

“What?” he jerks forward, alarmed, hands grasping onto the ledge of the tub for purchase.

When their fingers graze by accident, his eyes fall at the same moment as hers, but Jack’s reflexes are quicker ( _eyes are wider, breath is shorter_ ) when it comes time to nervously wrench them away.

( _You are being ridiculous_ , she tells herself.)

Grounded in this thought, Elsa feels a sudden surge of presence as she stares at him across the invisible divide along the rim of the tub. _We can trust each other, can’t we? Isn’t that what the whole purpose of this exercise is all about?_

“I don’t mind,” she tells him, steady and still like a tide pool: separate and seemingly unaware of the thrashing of the ocean’s waves just out of her reach. She reminds herself that her calmness is real, if she allows it to be. “I am not usually one to break physical boundaries, but… if you don’t mind sharing more of who you are, then I certainly don’t.”

Jack eyes her dubiously. Admits, rather candidly, “The last time you touched my skin—you ran.”

A fact that the universe may evidently never allow her to forget. “Do you still believe I will?”

For a few full seconds, she half-regrets opening a door to an answer that she may invariably not like. And then Jack’s hand slides out of the water and comes to rest on the edge of the tub, palm facing up.

Fingers first—tips to tips, the insides of knuckles pressing together, then the feel of air being gently trapped between two palms. Elsa rests her hand gently over his, and is still somehow surprised when she feels Jack’s hand pressing imperceptibly higher, more solidly, into hers.

His skin is cool, like the chill of the Cape, no matter the season, no matter the sun. Ever cold.

"I am—much funnier in my own language,” Jack blurts suddenly. Elsa tries to gauge his expression, but he won’t quite meet her eyes. “Quicker wit. More fun."

Her chest feels too tight. _Light,_ she thinks. _Lightly now_. "Please,” she scoffs, gently. Brushes fingertips over his, distractingly. “Your wit is quite enough as it is."

Jack catches her gentle sarcasm and grins, just a little.

“I mean, I don’t—sound like this,” Jack insists. “All—broken up.”

_But you didn’t, just yesterday._

Suddenly in desperate need of a topic change, Elsa turns her attention back to the gills along Jack’s hip. Without breaking the contact between their fingers, Elsa reaches her other hand back into the water, against his ribs. "What does this feel like, compared to when you are human?" Elsa asks quickly, distractingly, as she strokes the slippery skin along his side. _I guess mercreatures aren't ticklish, then?_

"I wouldn’t—really know."

She swipes her knuckles along what might have once been a hipbone, below the series of gills, her forearm easing deeper below the surface. "Huh."

"You... You haven't ever—this is not uncomfortable for you?"

Elsa's hand stills in the water. "Is it for you?"

"I don't... think so."

Hm. Best not, then.

"You don't have to stop," Jack grabs her hand when it slips out of the water, tightly around her wrist. "If you are curious."

She is. But she shakes her head, "I have seen more than enough proof to last me a lifetime. You've already given me plenty of patience."

"But—it's not just proof, right? I mean—unless, it is because, you do not like the feeling—"

“You’re wrong,” Elsa discounts immediately, staring him down through the rising steam. She opens her mouth, but hesitates: how to put this delicately? "I want to respect your boundaries.”

“I am—not a territory?”

 _Are you sure?_ Elsa eyes the long expanse of his tail, of his arms, of his torso. “I know. But you have already given more than I could hope to ask for, and I am not willing to take any more.”

“I don’t mind if—what I mean is, if you are worried that I do not want—“

“Shh!” Elsa’s grip tightens on the rim of the tub.

That is definitely the sound of keys jingling at the front door.

“Jack,” she whispers, alarmed. “You have to change back!”

Jack’s eyes go round. (Have the lids changed too, ever so slightly? How had she not noticed? _This isn’t the time!_ ) “Now?” he complains.

“ _Yes!_ ” she whisper-hisses, scrambling up, “ _Now!_ ”

She’s standing on tiptoe at the cabinet next to the mirror in the corner when she hears the tell-tale slip-sounds of someone raising themselves out of the water. She’s very focused on her task of finding a spare towel which must be lodged in the back of the shelf somewhere when she simultaneously hears Anna’s laughter coming from the kitchen and feels the sudden warmth of someone standing somewhere close behind her. Droplets and splashes of water are falling carelessly onto the floor and Elsa suppresses the first instinct to scold because Jack has never had to worry about slippery bathroom floors before so instead she searches for something for Jack to dry off with while listening to him make a mess of her weekly-rented floor, and curses to herself about how she is going to find the time to hide Jack from her sister and manage to rid the evidence of a soaking wet bath rug, all while Anna’s cheerful conversation emanates from too few steps away, are you _serious_.

“ _What are you looking for?_ ” Jack hisses, loudly, because apparently he does not yet know how to properly whisper.

“Something for you to—dry yourself with,” Elsa grunts, and barely withholds herself from climbing onto the closed toilet lid and leaning across the space to get a better reach—but, oh honestly, at this point, what the hell—and climbs herself up and into the shelf that is apparently only good for useless hand towels. What on earth are they supposed to do with a hand towel? “So you can get dressed and appear as if you haven’t just spent the last half hour soaking with me in my bathtub.”

“With you?”

“Yes. _No_ ,” Elsa corrects, rapidly. “No, I mean— _gracious,_  where the hell is a towel?”

“Like this one?”

Elsa’s head snaps towards Jack before she can think twice about it. Wrapped haphazardly around his waist, or some attempt of it, anyway, is her very own shade of blue.

“Ah,” she says. That is, indeed, a towel.

“I don’t get it,” says Jack, who has still not learned the value of a whisper. “Anna knows what I am. Why should I—hide from her?”

“Jack,” Elsa hisses, and it occurs to her that she is still elbow-deep in dry, useless washcloths. “Anna may not be here alone. Dry off immediately and put your clothes back on!”

He glances down, as if it hasn’t occurred to him that his state is anything less than appropriate. He still very likely has no idea, but Elsa does not feel herself to be in a position in which she should be the one to explain it to him. “But Anna is already—?”

“Jack, _now_.”

He obeys, which is a start, and he turns back around with what ridiculously appears to be a wounded look, so it’s as Elsa is reflecting on what a bizarre and inexplicable evening this has been when Anna’s fist knocks sharply at the bathroom door, Jack swivels back with a split-second look that can only be described as _I told you so_ , before she slips, and the only thing left for her to do is fall and for him to catch her awkward stumble, which isn’t—well, it isn’t painful, but it isn’t pleasant, and Jack’s skin is suddenly a lot warmer than she remembers and _ow_.

“Elsa? I just have to grab my mascara real quick, I’ll be like—two seconds, kay? I just—oh.”

They freeze, which is a terrible, terrible incriminating thing to do, but there really doesn’t seem to be any other choice. Elsa is distinctly aware of where Jack grips her shoulder and her side, the awkward angle at which she toppled, the even more awkward diagonal angle at which he holds her, one of her feet still tilted atop the toilet seat lid.

“Oh,” Anna repeats. Her hand hand hangs loosely over the door handle, one foot still glued to the hallway floor.

Somehow, amidst everything, Anna does not seem surprised.

“Anna,” Elsa says, because it’s the most effective and productive thing to say. She pushes herself off of Jack’s chest without looking in his direction, and rights herself as best she can, racing heart and all. With all the aplomb she is capable of, she announces to the shocked silence at large that: “Tonight has been… a very informative evening.”

Anna’s attention slides over to Jack, which does not deter Elsa’s laser-point focus on her sister’s freckles at all, and then Anna’s gaze slides down the length of Jack’s body to his legs, and out of all the things she could possibly say, the utterly last thing Elsa expects is, “Oh.  Um. Jack, you should probably pick up my sister’s towel.”

“Hey, have you guys seen where my rice krispies are at? I coulda sworn I left them on top of the—”

Kristoff comes into view in the doorframe just as Elsa’s brain pieces itself together at last. Jack has only just managed to fix his towel, or so she can only assume, since she has yet to look his way.

“Oh. Hey,” says Kristoff, with minimal surprise but more than enough awkwardness to fill an already oversaturated room. “So, uh, you guys have been busy, clearly.”

Elsa’s jaw drops of its own accord, mouth parted with too many unspoken words, even as Anna’s voice bursts out into a torrent of laughter.

“Oh my god! This is so great!,” she clasps her hands together, and Elsa turns on her. “I’m so glad this worked out so easily! God, just think of all the times I’ve almost stupidly spilled the beans and now I won’t have to worry about that anymore!”

“Anna, you’ve only known for like… barely forty-ish hours.”

“Yeah, but that’s a lot of—“

“You’ve known, too?” Elsa eyes Kristoff, cutting off Anna mid-sentence, and summoning a faint flush to Kristoff’s cheeks. Anna’s excitement comes slamming to a halt. For the first time since she left the side of the tub, Elsa allows herself to fully face the mercreature in the room. “Does everyone know?”

 _Calm down, Elsa_ , she pleads with herself. _He won’t understand._ After all, if even Elsa can’t seem to understand exactly where this tidal wave of resentment is coming from, then Jack surely can’t.

It shows on his face.

“No?” he answers, a question of so much else.

Kristoff and Jack’s expressions share mutual looks of confusion, but Anna understands immediately; she opens her mouth.

“Kristoff,” Elsa says suddenly, and he stands alert, and out of the corner of her eye she can see Anna’s face falling. But Elsa is already moving towards him, past him, towards the hallway and beyond. “I put your rice krispies in an airtight container in the cabinet to the left of the sink.”

“Where are you going?” Anna asks, openly worried now, doing a terrible job of even trying to mask it. Elsa takes a deep breath.

“The kitchen,” she answers levelly. “I’m just giving Jack some privacy.”

“Ha! That kid wouldn’t know the meaning of ‘privacy’ if it smacked him in the—oow.”

“What Kristoff is saying, Elsa, is that—yes! You’re right! Jack! You should get, um, back into comfortable clothes.”

“Uh… yeah. Hey, you know what? Ah. Yes. Thanks, Elsa, that was… I appreciate it and… um. Yeah. I am gonna… I’m just gonna go see if Flynn has any extra beers in his fridge now.”

Elsa and Anna both watch as Kristoff makes a beeline for the kitchen, and disappears around the corner and presumably out the front door. As Elsa hasn’t made it very far down the hallway, the three of them are left in the stilted vicinity of the bathroom.

“So…” Anna tries, fidgeting. “Did you guys have a good talk?”

Elsa can’t explain the annoyance that is bubbling inside of her. She needs to be in a place where she can think. “We did,” she says, and heads toward the kitchen.

“Wait—Elsa, wait!” She can hear her sister scurrying down the hallway after her. “Elsa, come on!”

Elsa can’t stop the huff as she enters the kitchen. Her hand reaches for the tea kettle before she even knows what she’s doing, and when she remembers Jamie’s earlier insistence on brewing her a cup of tea only hours before, she can’t help the thickening of annoyance that heats into her blood. The tea kettle clanks down onto the burner. _Control yourself, Elsa._

“Oh, Elsa, no,” she assures her, and takes the liberty afforded only to her, demonstrates the freedom of placing a careful hand at the joint of Elsa’s shoulder. “No, it’s not like that. It’s just—you know how I lose my stinkin’ mind over secrets, and after what happened at the beach I couldn’t handle being the only one of us to know the truth, and I—I was going nuts, so I asked Jack if he wouldn’t mind if I had another human friend to talk to about and then Kristoff and Jack were able to sneak off for a bit this morning so they could talk about it—”

“I understand.”

The room is cold with the awkwardness of poorly-timed explanations. Too many strange feelings. Here Elsa goes again, bringing an unnecessary chill to what should be a warm and supportive occasion.

“Elsa, please,” Anna needles. “Can’t we talk about this?”

Elsa watches the flames lick the underside of the tea kettle: she wasn't expecting to have this conversation tonight; she thought she'd have at least until the morning to put together her thoughts. Belatedly, she remembers the two cups of cold, unfinished, unstated tea on the table.

So Elsa sends a pointed glance back down the length of the hallways, then turns to stare at her sister. “Not now, Anna.” But when she pointedly turns back to preparing tea, she can feel the baleful stare boring into her cheek.

"Elsa, I'm sorry," she whispers, pleads, "But it wasn't my secret to tell."

"Of course it wasn't," Elsa nearly actually snaps, glaring at her. "I know that."

Anna looks unconvinced. "Then why are you still mad?"

 _It’s so much more than that._ "It’s not anger.”

"I don't believe you," Anna decides, "but it feels like you're feeling a little better, at least."

Elsa is hardly in a place to judge the scope of her feelings accurately, but she won't argue either way.

"So,” Anna sighs, but with a decidedly brighter air. She’s apparently aiming for levity. “Now that being rescued by a mermaid is out on the table—"

"Jack doesn't like to use that word,” says Elsa, more monotone than she’s ever thought possible. Speaking of—where the hell is he? She glances back down an empty hallway. “Because it's not inclusive of what all the Guardians are really like.” Or something.

“Ohhh, right, right, right. So now that being rescued by a mercreature is out—well. Actually, to be honest… that doesn't even really technically work either, especially not for Aster’s true form—“

Elsa rolls her eyes. ”A Guardian, then."

"Well, yeah, sure, but—"

"Anna, secret rescues and jargon notwithstanding, is there anything else I should know about?"

Anna blinks. "Uh. Well, have you learned about the Forces of Darkness that lurk at the bottom of the ocean and try to suck out all the good life force energy so it can become strong enough to walk on land like the Guardians have learned to do?"

Elsa blinks back. If she remembers correctly, it’s actually more so that such Forces of Darkness or whomever had also once roamed the land, and was trying to earn its power back. But what does she know about these things? Elsa turns to the kettle and adjusts the knob of the stovetop. "Yes."

Anna waits.

“Wait, that's it? Just... ‘yeah, you've heard’? About the creepy evil guy chilling down at the Pacific Trench with a bunch of nighttime creepy sea monsters?"

Elsa shoots her sister a look, but Anna goes on.

"Seriously! How can you just—doesn't this freak you out the tiniest bit?"

"Anna, it's not really our business. According to Jamie, the Guardians have things under control."

"Yeah, but more people are getting lured in by his dark magic!” she cries. “They're becoming more aware of him, and feeding him more energy—"

"All the reason for us to stay out of it," says Elsa, with finality. "We didn't come on vacation to get wrapped up into...... whatever this is."

"An underseas war of magical forces?"

"Danger," Elsa replies, quite simply.

"Well, what if we already have?" Anna persists, and Elsa begins to feel her irritation truly grow. Where the hell is Jack? What is taking him so long? "Jack saved me from the riptide, you know that, but have you ever thought about what causes a riptide?"

"There are many different scientific theories," says Elsa, which is a much preferable way of describing the fact that there, in all, no proven causes, and her stomach is too busy spasming.

"Elsa," Anna pleads. "They think that Pitch has been using riptides in recent years to suck in human mortals and drain them for his power. He's been learning to control the tides from the Moon, and he cheated off how Sandy runs his ship—"

"A ship?"

"It's a metaphor."

"Sandy seems rather more like an adjective,” she deflects.

"No, Sandy is a name of a Guardian, who runs a metaphorical ship, it's—they don't REALLY sail it, clearly, it’s underwater, so technically they swim, and it could be more like a submarine for him, anyway—“

"The point, Anna."

"The point is: when Jack revealed himself to me, and when Jamie explained what was happening—it was like part of me already knew what they were talking about, because I had FELT the darkness they were talking about!" 

Elsa shakes her head. "You were submerged underwater, Anna, of course it was dark."

"I'm not talking about the way it looked, Elsa, I'm telling you how it felt!"

"Anna, what are you asking me?" Elsa snaps at last. "You want me to believe that your near death experience was caused by an ancient sea monster?"

"Well, for starters!”

Elsa shakes her head. With a rather nasty scoff, she **slams** down another two fresh tea mugs onto the counter. “And then what? Give you my blessing to transfer up to university in New England so you can stay here and get wrapped up in this nonsense instead of focusing on your studies? Your dreams?”

"I didn't say—"

"But you're considering it," Elsa stares. "You were serious last night when you said you'd like to transfer."

The wide-eyed green gaze snaps Elsa back to a memory at seven-years old: of finding a tiny, chagrined little thing with twin red braids in the kitchen past dark with her hand caught in the cookie jar.

Anna blinks at her. "Is that why you're mad?"

Elsa busies herself with pouring hot water, with dropping the satchets into the porcelein. Seriously, is Jack hiding? What on earth is taking him so long?

“Before I learned the truth tonight, I’d wanted to believe that your saying so was just a whim," she says, eyes on the tea. "Some small blip of a fantasy you got because you didn't want vacation to end, in which you could envision spending the whole year at the Cape, without taking the moment to remember that this place may thrive in the summertime, but in the winter it hibernates just like any other tourist trap. The Cape is not meant for winter, Anna."

"Well, first of all,” Anna straightens herself up, “how do we know it’s not, if we don't give it a shot? And Jamie doesn't mind it, you know—he actually likes that it slows down so much in the winter, because fewer tourists mean fewer chances for Pitch to surface, and he can actually get more research done without people bothering him by getting into danger!”

Elsa’s expression must have revealed how very little this argument helped her case; Anna nearly winces.

Slowly, Elsa responds, ”You've discussed it at length, I see."

Anna lets loose a groan of unmitigated frustration. ”Elsa, come on—you now this isn’t about that! Seriously, why wouldn't I want to be closer, now that we know what we know? Elsa, there’s—there's real magic in this world! How could we go back to the way things used to be? We can't!"

A last-ditch resort, but: "Does Kristoff know what you're planning?"

"Kristoff wants to stay, too,” Anna says, like she knows it’s a dangerous gamble to mention, because it is; like that settles it, only it really doesn't. Elsa's stomach tumbles. "And we want you to move with us—"

Oh.

Oh, no.

"Anna, no. We’re not—we are not rearranging our whole _lives_ around this!"

"You wouldn't even have to change much!" she exudes, warming to the topic, the barest thread of desperation. She tries to spread her enthusiasm with touches to Elsa's arms, her shoulders, her braid. The more aggravated Elsa gets, the more hopeful Anna becomes. ”Look—just look! You could easily afford to keep the condo downtown and invest in a place up here too, and you wouldn't even have to change time zones or regions, it would just be a change of address and a bit of a longer commute on some days—"

"That is beside the point!” Elsa insists. “This has absolutely nothing to do with us!"

"Something isn't gonna go away just because you pretend it's not there, Elsa," Anna says sternly. "I thought you of all people might remember that."

Elsa's eyes narrow.

"We have a chance to be a part of something huge," says Anna, more quietly, pleadingly. "Something literally magical… And to be closer to our Guardians, who are gonna protect us from a harm that's out to get us, anyway. What is it gonna cost us, really?"

"Just because you can't see the price doesn't mean there isn't one," replies Elsa.

Anna stares at her, mouth agape. A small noise of protest escapes her, but then Elsa huffs and abruptly turns away.

"Where the _hell_ is Jack?"

 

//

 

Jack, as it turns out, is still naked in the bathroom. 

"Oh my god," Elsa covers her eyes, “Oh my god. Jack! God—why on earth aren't you putting your clothes back on?"

"Yeah. Well—you see," Jack grapples with his newfound grip over the fluffy towel precariously fisted at his hip. "They might have gotten—too wet? And Jamie always tells me that humans aren't supposed to keep their clothes on if they're wet, so—I have been waiting? For you?  Because you were talking very seriously? And—yelling, maybe?"

"Anna,” says Elsa, after two deep breaths. “Go grab a change of sleep-clothes from Kristoff downstairs, please," she orders, meanwhile thinking, _I do not_ yell _._

"No need, I got 'em right here!"

Elsa swings her gaze down the hallway, toward where Anna is marching towards her room. "His clothes are in your room?"

Anna blinks. "Uh..."

Elsa shakes it off. "It's fine.” It’s the least of her concerns, at this point. Deep breaths. “Just grab them."

Anna ducks into her room without another glance.

 

//

 

"Holy mackerel, Jack!” Anna exclaims. “You're gonna swim in these."

"I thought—wet clothes—were why I couldn't wear?"

"Oh, no, sorry, it's—that's a weird English thing. It just means that the clothes will be too big on you, like the ocean might be."

"The ocean's size is—perfect?"

"Well, YEAH, but like… in an English figure of speech, we have this expression where if your clothes are too big for you, you’re flailing your body all over the place, like you're drowning—"

"Anna,” Elsa halts. “Just—just hand him the clothes. _Please_. Jack, we'll be waiting outside."

“Yeah,” Anna adds, trying to peer around the doorframe as Elsa all but plows her out. “If you need any help, just let us—“

Elsa closes the door with a gratifying _thud._ Then she covers her face with her hand, and sighs. She can feel Anna’s thoughtfulness ready to explode.

"Elsa, look,” she pleads. “I’m sorry that all of this is coming out at once… I know this can’t have been easy, and we really didn't mean to throw all of this at you—"

"Anna, its late," she sighs. "And I am tired. It's been a long evening."

"I know. It's just... tomorrow is our last full day, and—"

"We'll find time to talk tomorrow," says Elsa. "And if not, then the next day, on the way home, or when we arrive back. We don't need to rush."

The words hold in the air for a moment. It is both clearly a dismissal and a distant invitation. It is the best Elsa can give her, for now.

“All right,” Anna sighs. “But if it’s any help… I really would like to tell you about what happened that day, in the water. Now that I can.”

Elsa’s throat tightens as she swallows. “All right. I would like that.”

Anna’s eyes take on a mischievous gleam. “As long as you tell me how Jack broke the news.” Anna tilts her head to the bathroom door, waggles her brows exaggeratedly. “Because I know y’all weren’t just discussing mer-theory in there when we showed up.”

Elsa pales. “Anna,” she warns.

But Anna only laughs. “I love you,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere, straight out of her bleeding heart, and wraps her arms around Elsa’s neck. Elsa sighs without meaning to, and pats her sister on the back with a slow, exhausted sort of recognition, then stares balefully as Anna leans back and beams. “Should I go join the others downstairs and let you and Jack, ah… finish up?”

“Anna.”

“Your discussion, I mean, Elsa, jeez.”

“Go.”

 

//

 

“Tell them Jack went home,” Elsa orders, on a last-minute whim.

Anna blinks up at her from the stairway; Elsa has literally flown into the doorway to make sure that Anna receives her command.

It may or may not be rendered moot by Jack tentatively peering out the doorway behind her. He is wearing a hoodie that is at least three times too big. She represses the urge to roll her eyes.

Anna looks up challengingly. “Isn’t that _more_ suspicious?”

Elsa’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

Anna shakes her head, sighing long and loud and entirely for show. “Fine, fine,” she calls out over her shoulder, easily ambling down the steps, in absolutely no rush. “You know how they are—they think it’s inevitable, anyway, so if anything, telling the truth would only _ensure_ your privacy rather than endanger it.”

“Anna.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll tell ‘em what you want me to tell ‘em,” and then she waved over her shoulder, for once outright ignoring Elsa’s baleful glare. _This week has changed so much already_ , she thinks with a long-suffering sigh.

“You want her to—lie?”

Elsa looks back to Jack, who is, startlingly, hovering directly over her shoulder. _God, he’s tall._ She forgets. Pictures double the length of tail. Blushes, of all things.

“Only about where you are.”

Jack scrunches his nose. “Why?”

Elsa sighs, long and hard. How many times can a single person sigh in one evening before they simply run out of sighing power? When they just run out of breath completely? And on that note, she pushes herself off of the door frame. She nearly backs right into him, but he quickly moves out of the way, thank goodness.

“Come on. Let’s go have that tea.”

“Again?”

“Third time’s the charm, or something.”

 

//

 

Jack is looking at his tea more than he’s actually drinking it. But Elsa is so grateful to actually be able to sit and… process.

They’re at the kitchen table, at opposite ends. It’s hardly the most comfortable location, but Elsa won’t consider going anywhere near the couch right now, and she’s hesitant to return to the bathtub after her sister’s interruption. The wooden chairs don’t allow her to relax much, but they certainly keep her _alert_.

She’s curled up as well as can be, nursing her lukewarm cup of tea with both hands. _If you had known, two weeks ago, sitting in your office armchair with your two o’clock chai tea latte sitting in front of you with your towering white mountain of paperwork, that this is where you would be, right now…_  

The window is open. Elsa can hear the waves on the shore, can hear the winds calling. _What does that sound like… to Jack?_

Elsa has a million questions; she never wanted any of them.

So now what?

“Are you angry… with Anna?”

Elsa looks up, surprised. Jack’s emotions are still so clear on his face. He’s been worrying about this for a while.

“No. Not really... It's complicated," she sighs, and blows over her tea, even though it really doesn't need it. "I’m also... proud that she was so loyal to keeping your secret,” she answers. “Keeping confidence is not usually her strength."

Jack doesn’t say anything to that, but Elsa is getting better at reading his silences. She watches his face, the tapping of his fingers on the ceramic, the jiggle to his bouncing leg on the hardwood.

“You think I’m angry with you?” she ventures.

Jack looks startled, and increasingly more wary. “Aren't you?”

Instead of answering outright, Elsa decides a different tack. “Why would I be angry at you?”

“I… because I lied.”

Elsa shrugs. “Yes, you did. Which we’ve already talked about: you had what you felt was a good reason for it, and then you told the truth. And I’m beginning to understand. I’m not angry.”

Jack shifts in his chair. Continues to look into his cup, without drinking it. Elsa’s eyes narrow, speculatively.

“ _Why_ do you think I’m angry at you?”

“Because I lied—”

“No,” Elsa gently corrects. “What about me makes you believe I’m angry, right now?”

Jack says nothing. Instead, he trails his gaze over the distance from one end of the table to the other, maps the space between them with his eyes. _Ah_.

“Ah,” Elsa breathes, momentarily speechless. “Yes, that’s… The truth is, I value my space. With the exception of Anna, I don’t often like to get very close to other people.”

“Is that what you were thinking… on the beach?”

Her mouth is ferociously dry. Speaking is becoming quite difficult, quite uncomfortable. She tries to clear her throat, finds herself looking into her tea. “No,” she quietly admit. “That’s not what I was thinking, on the beach.”

At the other end of the table, there’s the noisy scrape of chair legs on the floor, like Jack’s suddenly moved his seat back as if to rise—but the motion stops as soon as it starts. Elsa doesn’t look up, her heart pounding in her chest. She can feel his gaze on her, a thousand questions, and nowhere to begin.

“I want—to fix it,” he says.

Elsa swallows. “How?”

“I want—you to trust me, again.”

 _That’s so absurd_ , she thinks. _If anything I trust you now more than ever. I might trust you more than just about anyone—save for Anna_.

But is she really in a position where she can make him understand that she doesn’t trust herself?

She’s trying to put the words together when an unexpected question catches her off-guard. “Jack… if I were—like you,” she begins, “how would you regain someone’s trust?”

Jack, too, is caught off-guard. “If you were—like me?”

“Yes, I mean—what would your kind do? What _do_ you do, when you want to show someone that everything is okay? Or will be.”

Jack’s eyes take on worlds of meanings. “It’s—difficult to explain, in this language. It’s not—possible, on land.”

Elsa frowns, curious and disappointed. She tries not to feel… put out. _You didn’t ever want to be a part of this, anyway. Now isn’t the time to get jealous over something you don’t belong to._

“I see.”

“How would you?” Jack curiously demands, his mission restored. “How do you show?”

Elsa tries to think of the proper answer… and is reluctantly is forced to admit that she is not the best person to answer this question. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, how do you _want_ people to show you everything is okay?”

 _Time_ , Elsa thinks, again—but that’s not an option. _We leave in just over a day_.

Her mouth opens, and shuts. The question feels too big, too looming; this air of unfinished business is hanging over them like a thundercloud, and Elsa half-wishes it would just rain already, so they don’t have to keep sitting here under it, waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen next, especially when she can’t even remember why she’s supposed to be wary of the rain in the first place.

Something clicks.

“Well… I don’t know if you would understand this, where you’re from,” Elsa awkwardly begins, “but up here, most people recognize that there’s… something different, about my brain.” Is he understanding any of this? She can only hope. “It doesn’t affect me the way it used to, but… there were times when I couldn’t think straight, and my mind took over my body.” Reconsiders. “Or maybe my body took over my mind. I’m still not sure which.”

Jack watches, and listens.

“Anyway,” she clears her throat. “Anna always… understood that during those times, it’s best just to… stay near. And not say anything. Just… be close.”

Jack really looks like he doesn’t understand. _Of course he doesn’t_.

“I… shouldn’t say anything?”

“For now… I don’t think there’s really anything else that can be said.”

Jack’s head slowly tilts to the side, contemplating. It reminds her so much of that first day on the beach. _Oh_. Look where they are now.

“That’s… similar,” Jack decides. “To what we do.”

Elsa can’t help it; the wry, unimpressed smile that glides its way onto her mouth. “Oh?”

“And heartsongs,” Jack adds, as Elsa’s stomach drops. “But you don’t have those.”

“No,” Elsa quickly agrees. “I don’t sing.”

“It’s not singing—a heartsong is the way we—” Jack stops short, astounded. “You don’t sing?”

“Jack,” Elsa sets down her tea cup, ends this conversation _immediately_. “I’m sorry, but I’m rather tired… oh my god,” she gasps, when she sees the hour on the clock. _Definitely tired_. “I need to go to bed.”

She stands and retrieves their finished tea cups without much fanfare. As she gently deposits the cups in the sink, she’s already making a mental list of everything they’ll need to do tomorrow—including, but not limited to: lying to all of their friends, digging the truth out of Anna, texting Jamie and thanking him again for, well, everything—

Jack is suddenly behind her.

“We’ll go… to the living room?” he haltingly asks. “Like last night?”

Elsa feels her expression shutter. Was that really only just last night? 

How to break this to him lightly?

“Jack… I don’t think my body can handle another night lounging on the living room floor,” she gently begins, and does not add, _not after it spent so much time on the beach_. “What I really need is a good night’s rest.”

“Yes,” Jack says, nodding earnestly. “You need rest.”

 _God, why is he still so endearing_. “Yes,” Elsa echoes back, a little helplessly. “Thank you.” 

“So that means no couch, either?”

Elsa huffs a laugh, in spite of herself. “Yes, no, the couch is not exactly the pinnacle of sleep havens.”

“So where to go?”

Suddenly, Elsa realizes that there might be more lying beneath his question. _Surely, he’s not asking_ …?

“Jack,” she says, slowly, carefully, a tad pleadingly. “I’m not… asking you to join me.”

Jack— _bless him—_ grows confused.

“But,” he protests, “you asked me to stay. To say nothing and just… be close.”

Oh.

“Oh, well, yes, I _did_ , but what I meant was—” _What? In daylight? Tomorrow?_ “We’ve both had a long day, and an even longer night. There will be time tomorrow for us to… If you’re worried about sleeping on the couch, I’d be more than happy to offer you my bed and take the couch myself—”

“I don’t want the couch,” Jack protests, firm and clear and _his words are flowing so much more smoothly again_ and this—this really isn’t helping Elsa’s resolve. “I want to fix it, and you’re leaving soon,” Jack counters. “I want to do what you asked me to do.”

Elsa’s scoff comes out more nervous than she’d anticipated. “Well, I didn’t exactly expect you to take me up on my suggestion by staying the night with me.”

“Why not? We did last night.”

 _Do not blush. Do not blush, Elsa, do not_. 

She is.

She’s trying not to think about it, but _oh_ , she knows she is. _Does he even know what that means?_ Does he know what _any_ of it means? It’s one thing to share the living room floor, but…

“That’s different,” Elsa answers, throat tight.

“But why?”

“Oh, for goodness’—Jack, listen, I’m too tired to explain what it all means, but sharing one’s bed is a very private, intimate sort of behavior, and right now, given all that we’ve been through tonight, I’m not sure that this is the wisest… what?”

Somehow, without Elsa fully being aware, Jack has crept closer into her space; the sink is at her back, Jack is at her front, and there’s very little space between any of them. Such a difference in height could have easily become menacing or intimidating, but with Jack, it really is impossible, isn’t it, _how could you have ever imagined even for one second that he would ever hurt you?_

It’s hard to imagine, now.

He whispers, “I just want to be close to you.”

Elsa feels her tongue get lost somewhere in her throat. She _knows_ he’s just repeating her own words back to her, he’s only echoing what she’s said just moments before… but to hear them so gently spoken, as if to a caged animal— _and is that what she is? is that how he sees her?_ she wonders—to hear them with such openness, such faithful transparency, she just…

“Okay, listen,” she clears her throat, stern and business-like, because she is going to take back _control_ of the situation, dammit, intoxicating proximity, be damned. “I am willing to accept your… suggestion. But there are ground rules.”

“'Ground' rules,” Jack echoes, nodding absently, committing it to memory. “Jamie told me about those.”

Elsa could use this very moment as an opportunity to point out ground rules for personal space; she does not. Instead, she continues to stare determinedly up into Jack’s pale, determined face, and to make something out of this, this _bizarre,_ unimaginable, incredibly ridiculous evening.

“Jack,” Elsa breathes, with sharp focus. “Keep your eyes on my eyes.”

Guiltily, his gaze snaps back up to hers. It’s very hard to breathe.

“Tonight, first and foremost, I want to _sleep_ ,” she says. “I want to lie down in bed, be comfortable, and fall asleep for a very long time. Do you understand?”

Jack nods vaguely. “That sounds wonderful.”

Oh, dear. “Secondly, when I said… _close_ , I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I still need space. You may share the bed with me, but we shouldn’t be… that is, you and should still have our own sides of the bed.”

“Sharing,” Jack echoes dutifully, “but not touching. I understand.”

 _Well. Maybe a little touching? No._ “Okay. I’ll need a few minutes to get ready for bed… wait. Do mercreatures brush their teeth?”

Jack looks highly perplexed. “Jamie wondered the same question… In our natural forms there is no need because we maintain our teeth and fangs through other means, but Jamie suggested that tooth-brushing should be helpful for understanding the cultural norms of humans. Or something.”

Elsa blinks.

“Right. Pretty sure we have a spare. Let’s go find it, shall we?” She means to slink out from his presence, but it’s not so easily done. The back of Jack’s fingers find the sleeve of her arm.

“Elsa,” he says. “Thank you.”

Before she says—or does—anything particularly unwise, she jerks a nod, and beckons him to follow her back into the bathroom.

 

//

 

She can’t say she would have ever guessed what it’d be like to brush one’s teeth next to a mer-person-creature who had clearly never brushed his teeth before, but… it’s not that far a stretch of the imagination, once you get over the whole “mer-people really exist” thing.

After many reminders to reach _the molars, Jack, don’t forget the far back!_ and not to mention the undersides of the teeth, Elsa does not think it terribly irresponsible of her if she lets him forgo flossing; apparently, in his true state, he doesn’t even need it. However, as soon as he sees her using the floss-pick, he of course wants to try one, too, which adds another unnecessary five minutes to their nighttime preparation, which, of course, means it’s another five minutes of useless worrying for Elsa.

Finally, when faces are washed and teeth are brushed and all the unneeded electricity in the condo have been shut down for the night, Elsa invites Jack into her room.

“All right,” Elsa sighs, flicking on the lamp and closing the door with business-like finality. “Choose either side."

With utter curiosity, Jack walks around the perimeter of the bed, until he reaches her nightstand at the other end of the room. All that’s on the small table is a clock and a lamp, but he still inspects the items like they are interesting artifacts. To him, she supposes, they are. She allows him to look around a bit more, filling his wonder, but when he starts aimlessly poking her blanket—enough is enough.

“That side, then?” Elsa sighs, and without further ado, unveils the covers and sits down upon her beloved mattress, covering her legs beneath them. Jack’s poking immediately comes to a stop. “Come on.”

Jack, for all his insistence, suddenly seems very unsure of himself. Elsa’s stomach tumbles with nerves. _Oh, no, don’t you dare,_ she half-glares at him. _The_ both _of us can’t be nervous!_

After a long moment, Elsa realizes that Jack is still staring at something in particular: her legs.

It shouldn’t be so shocking; he _is_ a mer-creature-person-thing, after all… but. Elsa clears her throat. Is it all right for her to ask?

“Was it terribly uncomfortable, the first time you… changed to two legs?”

Jack swallows. “Extremely.”

“Does it still bother you now?”

“Not as much.”

Elsa pats the bed. Before either of them can think twice about it, Jack plops himself onto the bed next to her, without remembering to lift his side of the covers first. Hintingly, she tugs the covers that are trapped beneath him.

“I’m—more graceful in the water, too,” Jack half-laughs, hair growing more and more mussed by the pillow, all the while struggling to slink his way under the covers, even with Elsa’s minor assistance tugging and prodding.

“I’d have to see it to believe it,” she laughs a little, playfully leaning over to tuck the blanket under his shoulder, feeling alarmingly more relaxed than anticipated… which is why it’s such a shock to see Jack staring dolefully up at her, transfixed by her words.

“Would you?” Jack prompts, drinking her in. “Would you want to see it?”

For a moment, the air surrounding her is nothingness. She’s aware of it all—her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, her nose; the sounds of the ocean through the crack in the window; the hopefulness in Jack’s bright, wide eyes, in the upturn to his chin; the fact that she wants to say ‘yes’.

“Maybe,” she answers, tentatively. “Maybe one day.”

It’s a very dangerous sight: Jack’s pale hair all strewn about her pillow, his openly honest face tilted so trustingly toward hers. Beside her, in her bed.

“We should sleep,” she dismisses, flicks off the lamp, and settles herself deep into the mattress, pulling the covers up to her shoulders. It’s a relatively cool night, even for this late in August, and Elsa is grateful for the excuse to hide beneath the blankets. Slowly, Jack follows her example. Except… “Jack, you know, it’s much better if you sleep on your back instead of your side.”

Jack does not move from his side; he continues facing her. “Is it?”

“It is.”

“Says who?”

Elsa sighs. “Scientists. Experts. Lots of people. But all right, sleep however you want. Goodnight.”

“I’ve never slept in a bed before.”

Her head turns toward his without her permission. “What about Jamie’s?”

Jack practically snorts. “Jamie doesn’t even sleep in his own bed. He’s always at the Center.”

Elsa doesn’t have a hard time imagining that. “Huh. Well… what do you think of it?”

He nestles deeper into the mattress, shifting the blankets around him. Elsa feels a warm fuzzy kind of feeling envelope her, not quite sleepiness, but close.

“It’s warm,” he answers, which she understands. “And soft. It smells like you.”

Elsa quietly chokes back a cough. “That’s only because it’s mine,” she adds, unnecessarily. “For the week, at least. I’ve been sleeping here every night this week. Except for last night, when we slept on the floor…” _Oh, god,_ she thinks. _I’m becoming Anna_.

And then, because it’s the only solution she can imagine, she shuts up.

The rushing sounds of the nearby waves filling her ears; the occasional glimpse of a distant, blinking lighthouse reaching out; the hushed sounds of Jack breathing beside her; the warmth. _What does this feel like, to him?_

“Let’s… try to sleep,” Elsa whispers, for fear of what her voice might sound like if she were to try to speak any louder. She looks to his expression, to see if there’s any sign of dissatisfaction or dissent, but Jack’s eyes are already heavy-lidded and sleep-ready. Elsa sighs. _That makes one of us, at least_.

“Only… a nap,” Jack protests. “For me. Mer-people… don’t… need sleep.”

Elsa doesn’t respond right away. Instead she’s content to watch as Jack is slowly pulled under; she’s never watched anyone fall asleep so fast before in her entire life.

“Huh,” Elsa marvels. “You really haven’t slept in a bed before. Have you?”

Jack doesn’t respond. He’s quite comfortably nestled into her pillow, lips slightly parted, silent. It’s probably the only time she’ll ever see him like this.

Which is the only reason why she allows herself to shift onto her side as well, to get a closer look. When she catches herself wondering what would happen if she reached out and touched the bangs at his brow, well—that’s really quite enough.

Elsa sighs into her pillow, warm and content, if not quite relaxed. “Goodnight, Jack,” she whispers, and settles in for some much-needed rest.

 

//

 

Sleep is quick in coming, and deep, and peaceful, but it does not last long.

 

//

 

Because at some point in the last few hours or so, Jack’s legs have tangled with hers.

And any hope Elsa might have had for a chance of her slipping away from him without his notice are completely ruined the moment he wakes up.

 

//

  
  



End file.
